Snoot Sandwiches, Sundown Towns and a Chef’s Reckoning with Racism

I didn’t know what a sundown town was until I moved to St. Louis. And I’ll be honest, it still jars me to hear people describe them casually, as in this deeply personal segment of the local TV show “Food Is Love.” In the words of Chef Lavinia McCoy:

“My grandparents were like, we couldn't even travel up highway 51 after dark.

So if we were going to leave Carbondale coming back to Decatur we had to do it before the sun went down because it was embedded in our mind that we didn't need to be on that highway after dark because of racism, Ku Klux Klan and all those things.

When we would leave Carbondale, going to Decatur, we would make sure the tank was on full because we did not want to stop at any gas stations along the way.

So that's the way we grew up.”

I don’t want to give away spoilers about what Chef Lasse Sorensen learns about his own complicity in this episode, which aired in 2022. But I commend him for his brutal honesty in sharing the lesson publicly as it unfolded.