Okra is one of the most polarizing dishes on the dinner table. You generally love it for its versatility or detest it for its slimy texture. We don’t know if it’s chef Jernard Wells’ soothing voice or his down-home demeanor, but he just has a way of making the warm-weather annuals sound like the best thing the garden has ever produced.
That’s nothing new, though. With shows like CLEO TV’s New Soul Kitchen and appearances on Food Network Stars and the Cooking Channel’s Best Things I Ever Ate, the chef has gotten audiences to willingly eat their vegetables, glaze their turkey meatloaf and fry their crab legs for years.
With his TV One series Savor The City debuting on April 3 — Forbes Travel Guide proudly premieres the show trailer here — Wells is putting a spotlight on the delicious intersection between Black culture, history and cuisine. So, pull up a chair and grab a bowl of cinnamon chipotle-roasted okra because the chef can’t wait to tell you about all the places he’s gone with his camera crew and the great food he tried once he got there.
Where do you call home?
I live in Gwinnett County, Georgia. I’m adjacent to Atlanta. If anybody asks, “Where do you stay in Atlanta,” I say, “Right on the other side of Lawrenceville for about 10 years.” I moved to North Georgia 18 years ago to Ringgold, right outside of Chattanooga. I opened a French and Cajun bistro up there years ago.
I was born and raised the first part of my life in Chicago. It’s where the majority of my family is. My mother and father made the conscious decision to move to Mississippi, where my great-grandparents owned 200 acres of farmland. My father, being a chef, wanted me to experience and see something different in life. Being from the concrete jungle, it was a culture shock at first, leaving from the big city and going to cotton fields and dirt roads. And everybody speaks with an accent. My accent didn’t used to sound [this Southern], but it’s something in the water.
It ended up being the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Later on, I started traveling with Tyler Perry while he was doing the play Madea’s Big Happy Family. I landed the opportunity to travel [and cook for Perry] while he was doing that. I also did some work with Paula Deen when she was at the height of her career. So, all the signs always pointed to Georgia.
When did you know you had what it took to be in front of the camera?
Honestly, I realized that the first time when I wrote the cookbook 88 Ways to Her Heart: “Cooking for Lovers” from the Kitchen to the Bedroom. Each recipe had a love story and a love name that goes along with it. Paula Deen and her team heard about this book and they reached out and wanted to know if I would travel and be on stage [with her]. Of course, I’m a chef and I’m used to cooking for people, but most chefs are in the kitchen. We’d come out and greet guests, but no real interaction.
So, when we get to the stage, [Deen] says, “Do you know what I’m supposed to be fixing today?” I said, “Yes, Mrs. Deen, it’s my job to know. I’m the chef. Of course, I’m gonna make sure I know because I’m gonna make you look good.” She said, “Great, ’cause I want you to carry me. I want you to go out there [and talk].” It was in front of a live audience of 15,000 people. My first time ever [cooking live] was in front of 15,000 people on stage in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She just walked around and talked to the guests and entertained them. From there, the phone started ringing.
It was never originally my intention to be on TV. My goal was to be a chef. Always wanted to share my love, my heritage and my cuisine with the world because I understood and knew that food was a vehicle. If I could get people to pay attention to me through food or my cooking, then I could filter and share any other knowledge and any other information that I wanted to do with them.
Do you ever get to relax and let others cook for you?
Cooking is relaxing for me. It’s my job. It’s my career. But I fell in love with my career before it became my career. I started cooking at a young age. I started cooking at 10 with my father and mother. By the time I was 13, my mother was giving me the opportunity of making what I thought would be a five-course romantic meal for them and serving them at the dinner table. It positioned me in a way where I just fell in love with it. And they always say, if you can find a job that you can go out and do for free, then you’re doing good. And that’s actually how I am when it comes to the kitchen.
What kinds of things do you have cooked up for the new show, Savor the City?
My other two shows on CLEO TV are New Soul Kitchen and New Soul Kitchen: Remix. Those are my babies. Savor the City is like the newborn. Savor the City takes a unique approach to exploring Black culinary heritage. We, as African Americans and as people of color, travel to some of the best places. We seek out some of the best food and the best entertainment that speaks to us.
My job with Savor the City is taking on that task to show more of who we are and our resilience. I’m talking about from New Orleans to Martha’s Vineyard to even to Brooklyn and the West Indian Day Parade. I’m talking about a million people [participating in the parade] right here in Brooklyn. Where else can you get that? A lot of people don’t know it’s been going on for 20 years. Over a million people show up there every year. Those are the things that I want to shine light on.
In Martha’s Vineyard, I had the opportunity to experience the Inkwell [an all-Black resort community in the area]. I not only got to go there, but I even joined the Inkwell Polar Bears, where I went in the water. It was really surreal and life-changing. The actual feeling that you get when you step in the water in Martha’s Vineyard [is amazing]. We had 120 of us out there. Every day, they go out to the water before sunrise — rain, sleet or snow. The only time they don’t go out is if it’s lightning.
As I tell people, it’s not just a journey of me telling the stories of individuals and sharing them with the world; it’s learning for me, it’s growth for me. And that’s one of the things I really love is the growth and learning. The moment we stop learning, we might as well go dig a hole and get in the ground.
Tell me some cities that you may not have known had a strong culinary scene, but once you got there, you were blown away by the food.
Oakland had some really amazing food. On one side of the bridge, you have San Francisco, right? We know it is a global food phenomenon with food. Some of the highest-rated restaurants come out of there. Granted, I highlight some amazing African American chefs who are coming out of San Francisco. But Oakland food is phenomenal.
And then right on the other side, you got Napa Valley. And speaking of Napa Valley, I really think going into Wine Country is so amazing because it allowed me to really tap into seeing what our African American brothers and sisters are doing there. I had a chance to stop by the Brown Estate. They’ve been producing wine since the early 1980s. Hearing the story of how Mr. and Mrs. Brown first came to Napa Valley in the early 1980s, bought over 400 acres of land and were told that this land would never cultivate and grow grapes [was inspiring]. Now look at it. Not only is it producing grapes, but it’s one of the most nostalgic and well-known brands in our community.
And there’s this young man who opened an African American-owned barbecue restaurant in Napa Valley by the name of Stateline Road Smokehouse. This brother from Kansas City opened this barbecue restaurant, [making him] the first African American to open a restaurant in downtown Napa Valley in 100 years.
How has soul food evolved in your eyes?
The first thing I always tell people is, “Let’s move the word ‘soul food’ to the back. Let’s change it from ‘soul food’ to ‘American cuisine.’” At the end of the day, African American culture goes back to slavery and our ancestors. We’re the ones who created the cuisine and the culture that America loves. If we go back to slavery, it was us as the chefs on the plantations. We hear about the slaves cooking all of the bad stuff — the chitterlings, the hog maws, all the leftovers that they were eating in the fields.
What we don’t talk about is how Big Mama was also in the big house cooking for the plantation owner. He was eating the best of the best and all the scraps and leftovers were coming to us. That tells you that not only did we master the ability to cook and make the worst food good, but we also mastered the ability to create the best food. There were no recipes then, which means once we came off the slave ship, the only thing we had to cook off of was memory.
We come from a whole other continent where things grow differently, different proteins. We have to learn how to create with that. And we do it by taking our African recipes that are in our minds and blending them with what’s grown here in America today. Hence, a new cuisine was born by the hands of us. “Soul food” only ties it back to a black person owning that restaurant. We’re far bigger than that. We’re far beyond that. It’s American cuisine.
What is on your plate for 2025?
Oh, 2025 is really going to be a blessed year. Two thousand and twenty-four was truly blessed and highly favored. But going into 2025, we have [my new restaurant] Cornbread & Butter [in downtown Grayson, Georgia] kicking off the beginning of the year. And then I have a line of products that are going into the Mariano’s chain of grocery stores that are in Chicago and around the Northeast. I’ll be continuing to travel, too, because Savor the City has been so great. I’m telling these stories to inspire others. But when I leave, I’m inspired. We’re going overseas to the Bahamas to cover some of our Bahamian brothers and sisters.
