Got grits? Southern Food Revival Takes Root on the Net with Gritlit.com Southern Cookbooks & Good Eats

Whether you're a wayward Southerner, a world-weary city slicker, or just missing Mayberry, with this online retailer -- in the immortal words of Scarlett O'Hara -- you'll never go hungry again.

NEW ORLEANS, LA, September 2004 -- Back in 1998, Bruce Lane and Scott Wyatt -- both homesick Southerners living in Manhattan -- chronicled their quest for down-home cooking in their guidebook "New York's 50 Best Places to Eat Southern: Where to Find Hoppin' John, Grits, Barbecue & Fried Everything" (New York: City & Company).

The project stirred up a foodie fervor that eventually took the Dixie duo back below the Mason-Dixon, where they've launched Gritlit.com Southern Cookbooks & Good Eats, an online Mom 'n' Pop store that caters to the cravings of wayward Southerners far and wide.

"Southern culture is so distinctly tied in with the rituals of eating, no refugee can escape its pull for long," says Lane. "Folks will go to great lengths searching for the grits and greens they once took for granted. That's why we're here."

Alongside a passel of memory-stirring regional Southern staples (such as grits, greens, pickles, preserves, RC® cola and barbecue sauces) and care packages (Backroad Buffet, Condiment Queen, Dixie Fish Camp...) you're not likely to find often outside the South is a selective collection of Southern regional cookbooks.

Wyatt says they sell a lot of hard-to-find cookbook titles plus recent releases, Cajun-Creole classics, soul food collections, and Junior League favorites. "We're filling a niche with interesting cookbooks folks are less likely to find in the bookstore behemoths," he says.

In keeping with the South's landscape of cinder block BBQ joints and country cafes, the Web site is deliberately free of frills and peppered with down-home recipes, anecdotes, original Southern snapshots, and Gritlit's new exclusive line of "got grits?" T-shirts and mugs.

Wyatt and Lane are also members of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Southern culinary traditions; contributors to the upcoming "South Carolina Encyclopedia"; and past hosts of three annual Southern cooking panels at the South Carolina Book Festival (guests have included Nathalie Dupree, Louis Osteen, John Egerton, Damon Lee Fowler, Ronni Lundy, Dori Sanders and John T. Edge).

Gritlit.com's selection of Southern specialty foods and cookbooks is available exclusively online (email is form-driven through Web site).

Mailing Address:

GRITLIT.COM
1000 BOURBON ST #407
NEW ORLEANS LA 70116

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