I visited the Southern Food and Beverage Museum (SoFAB) for an August 18 piece (find it here) for the New Orleans Advocate | The Times-Picayune, for which I toured the new exhibition “The Natural Port: A Look at New Orleans Coffee Culture” with Liz Williams and Isabella Bentz. The audio recording of our walk-and-talk is here:
Question for readers and listeners: What do you think of this edition of the audio interview? I’ve nudged it a little closer to podcast format – with theme music, intro, and outro — and will be loading it onto some of the podcast platforms. I’ve also built a video version of the podcast for The Museumgoer’s new YouTube page (find it here). Getting a podcast launched has been a goal for this project from the beginning. I still need to work on the audio quality, but I think it’s improved. Not sure if it works as a podcast yet or not, though. Let me know here: [email protected]
As noted in my Times-Picayune story, “The Natural Port” was inspired to recapture some of the attention another American port city has won for its bean scene.
“It kind of rubs you the wrong way that everyone thinks of Seattle as the coffee capital of America,” said Elizabeth Williams, SoFAB founder, podcaster and prolific author on the rich subject of local foodways. “We have been importing coffee into the Port of New Orleans since the 18th century.”
I’ve put the usual photos in a gallery this time to encourage you to follow the above QR code to the Bloomberg Connects digital interface for the exhibit. I’d not seen this platform before, and it’s wonderful. Also take a few minutes to see how SoFAB has used it to expand on the in-person experience (which I still encourage you to, um, experience) throughout its space.
As always, thanks for reading (and maybe listening). Sign up for the free Museumgoer newsletter here.
Questions, comments, corrections: [email protected]