Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe Essay | Critical Essay #2

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe Critical Essay #2

In the following excerpt, Dvorak examines the importance of cooking and serving food as a form of nurturing in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.

The table spread with culinary delights easily triggers images of home, hearth and familial companionship. In southern culture, especially, food is nothing less than the social base of most interchanges of human experience and activity. The concept of "southern hospitality" has re mained long after the demise of the antebellum era that birthed it. This graciousness surely began as much from logistics as generosity, for plantation and even tenant-farming neighbors, separated by hundreds of acres and miles of dirt roads, gathered at each other's homes for a gala "get together" that ultimately centered around food. Each plantation and homestead boasted its own specialties and secret recipes, which can still be enjoyed in eating establishments across the South. Barbecue, for example, was and...
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