Carolina Barbecue

a personAdrian Miller

also: Adrian E. Miller · the Soul Food Scholar

Headshot of Adrian Miller, award-winning author and professional speaker
Headshot of Adrian Miller, award-winning author and professional speaker — Aemlegal, CC0 1.0

A Denver writer and lawyer, the 'Soul Food Scholar' of his own site, whose Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue (UNC Press, 2021) is the history of the Black cooks, pitmasters and restaurant owners behind American barbecue and of their absence from its legends. It won the James Beard Foundation's 2022 Media Award for Reference, History, and Scholarship, his second after Soul Food (2013; award 2014). A former special assistant to President Clinton, he directs the Colorado Council of Churches and is a certified barbecue judge.

The story Cited · wp-adrian-miller

Miller left the White House when the Clinton administration ended — he had been special assistant to the president and deputy director of the President's Initiative for One America — and between jobs took up food writing after reading John Egerton's Southern Food. Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time (UNC Press, 2013) took him to 150 restaurants in 35 cities and won the 2014 Beard award for reference and scholarship; The President's Kitchen Cabinet (2017) named 150 African Americans who had cooked in the White House. Black Smoke came out in April 2021: essays on how barbecue was built on Black labor, enslaved cooks and then paid ones, and on how the menus, the television and the legends that followed left them out, with profiles of forgotten cooks and twenty-two recipes. The Beard Foundation gave it the Media Award for Reference, History, and Scholarship in Chicago on May 12, 2022. Miller sat on the board of the Southern Foodways Alliance from 2004 to 2010 and received its Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame award in 2018; he is a certified Kansas City Barbeque Society judge and was a consultant on Netflix's Chef's Table: BBQ. Tradition holds — the cooks at the eastern Carolina trenches were Black men for most of two centuries, enslaved and then paid; Black Smoke is the book this catalogue cites for that labor and its erasure.

Today Cited · web-adrianemiller-home

Executive director of the Colorado Council of Churches since June 2013, in Denver. His 2025 book with Deborah Chang, Cooking to the President's Taste: Asian Heritage Chefs in White House History (White House Historical Association), followed Black Smoke; in 2026 he earned a James Beard Media Award nomination for feature reporting.

Facts

rolewriter, scholar
regionThe American South
linksAdrian Miller — Wikipedia · Black Smoke — UNC Press · Meet Adrian — adrianemiller.com · 2022 James Beard Media Award winners
confidencehigh · updated 2026-09-15

Its kin

wordspitmasterBlack Smoke tells the history of the Black pitmasters the word was late to name.and of this page it says: whose Black Smoke tells the history of the Black pitmasters the word was late to name.stylesEastern North Carolina barbecuehis book is the record this catalogue cites for the Black cooks at the eastern pits and their erasure from the menus and legends.the pitwhole hogthe oldest cooking, whose labor — Black and mostly unnamed — Black Smoke traces.placesBackyard BBQ Pitthe Durham pit the press framed with his book: a Black-owned pit and what it takes to keep one.and of this page it says: whose Black Smoke is the frame the press used for it: a Black-owned pit and what it takes to keep one.organizationsSouthern Foodways Alliancehe sat on its board from 2004 to 2010 and received its Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame award in 2018.

Who points back

places · says of this pageBig T Bar-B-Qwrote the history of African American barbecue that the Black-owned directories sit downstream of.places · says of this pageBobbee O's BBQwrote the book on African American barbecue that frames why a directory of Black-owned pits exists at all.places · says of this pageTrue BBQwrote the history of African American barbecue that the Black-owned directories sit downstream of.people · says of this pageAdam Scottwhose Black Smoke tells the history of Black cooks like Scott, whose customers were white and whose name went on the bottle.art · says of this pageThe FSA photographs of Carolina eatingwhose Black Smoke follows the cooks the FSA caption sheet records as feeding two sittings.stories · says of this pageWhere all of this came fromwhose Black Smoke is the history behind half the directories on this page.stories · says of this pageThe Great Dividewhose Black Smoke follows the cooks both camps forgot to argue about.

Pictures

Headshot of Adrian Miller, award-winning author and professional speaker
Aemlegal · CC0 1.0
Adrian Miller, the Soul Food Scholar
Aemlegal · CC0 1.0

Sources

Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.

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