Writer and editor
Published by Flatiron Books
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“Alexander Smalls has owned, conceptualized, and helmed some of New York’s most iconic African American restaurants. Now, he follows up the James Beard award-winning Between Harlem and Heaven with Meals, Music, and Muses, a look at his world glimpsed through the lenses of music, food, culture, and history. It is a must-read journey through a life well lived and in recipe and reminiscence details the musical forms learned, the friends and family who instructed, and the foods shared along the way.” -- Jessica B. Harris
“If wine is bottled poetry, and jazz is brown sugar sprinkled in your ear, then Meals, Music, and Muses is a smorgasbord of fine words and sounds, a delicious symphony of haute cuisine that’ll make you wanna kiss your momma, then thank the ancestors for making a way out of no way—for Hoppin’ John Cakes and Grits and Sage Sausage Gravy and Frogmore Stew and all the recipes Alexander Smalls has reimagined so elegantly.” -- Kwame Alexander
“I had the great honor of being a guest at one of Alexander’s famous Sunday brunches in his beautiful brownstone in Harlem. The food was unbelievably delicious! It was a magical afternoon that I will never forget.” -- Tina Knowles-Lawson
“In Meals, Music, and Muses, Alexander creates a lyrical culinary anthology of our lives. A symphonic composition full of stories, contemporary southern recipes that celebrates the food and musical genres that influenced the history of America… He sets the table in a unique way from jazz to blues to divas on a plate…This is not your mother’s cookbook…" -- Dee Dee Bridgewater
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