Since 2016, Oldways has remembered K. Dun Gifford, founder of Oldways, by honoring a New Englander with the K. Dun Gifford Local Hero Award.
The Local Hero Award, presented at Boston’s Readable Feast, an annual event celebrating food, food writing, and people who make a difference. The K. Dun Gifford Local Hero Award honors “a New Englander who through some medium of food (author, writer, educator, chef, grower, producer, activist, nutritionist) has positively affected our local foodways.”
Since the inaugural event, the awardees include this group of accomplished and influential individuals:
2024: Chef Jasper White
This year – the winner of the K. Dun Gifford Local Hero Award is Chef Jasper White, a chef who made a huge difference in New England foodways and in the lives of many.
Jasper White grew up in New Jersey, in a home where the daily menu seemed certain to chart his route from childhood to kitchens, restaurants, and national renown. “I came from one of those food families,” he told The Boston Globe in 1989. “We ate everything, including snails, mussels, and all kinds of smoked fish…My grandmother was Italian, and she would sit and talk to me for hours about food,” Mr. White recalled. “She had a huge garden, and everything was always fresh. When I was going to spend the weekend with my granny, I would usually talk to her on Wednesday or Thursday, and we’d plan the menu for the weekend. She was my inspiration.”
With plenty of experience under his belt, Jasper White attended the Culinary Institute of America, and received a bachelor’s degree in 1976, one of the first classes to graduate after the school was accredited. After graduation, as described by John Mariani in Forbes, Jasper cooked his way around America in traditional kitchens—“country club jobs,” he called them. Then he walked into the Biltmore Plaza in Providence, looking for a job with Lydia Shire, and the rest is history.
American chefs were just beginning to express the pride in local, regional ingredients and diverse cooking traditions that led to the New American food revolution.
With Lydia, Jasper ran the kitchens at the Copley Plaza and the Parker House and the Bostonian Hotel, and the two became New England’s leaders of the New American food movement as it took hold in the 1980s. Plenty of other chefs joined them or were mentored by them – Gordon Hamersley, Jody Adams, Chris Schlesinger, Todd English, among many others.
In 1983, White opened his award-winning Restaurant Jasper, and went on to run the restaurant successfully for the next 12 years. He was hailed as one of the chefs defining “New American” cuisine nationally, according to former Globe restaurant critic Alison Arnett, and he won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast in 1991. – the first year the award was given. He threw aside French traditions in fine dining to throw a spotlight on seasonal New England cuisine instead, including new, inventive takes on fish chowder and a pan-roasted lobster dish that was both a signature dish and a favorite of Julia Child. “
“If Jasper White, owner-chef of this restaurant, isn’t careful, Restaurant Jasper could end up among the best New England restaurants serving American haute cuisine,” Globe food critic Anthony Spinazzola wrote in a four-star review not long after opening night. “He’s certainly started out on the right foot.” A decade later, Boston magazine anointed Jasper’s as Boston’s best seafood restaurant in 1993, saying that “the quality is unbeatable and no one prepares it better than Jasper White.”
In 1995, facing the obstacle of the Big Dig, he closed Jasper’s, wrote the first of his four books, took some time off, and did some consulting with Legal Seafood. But in 2000, he returned to the world of restaurants, opening the casual Summer Shack near Alewife Circle. Eater described it as a way for the public to get a taste of White’s cooking without the white tablecloth trappings. The New York Times wrote, “Enduringly popular, The Summer Shack spawned branches in Back Bay in Boston and at the Mohegan Sun casino. “ The Globe’s Kara Baskin wrote that the Summer Shack was a “family-friendly cavern, and his culinary celebrity helped to lure curious urbanites, older locals, and relieved suburban parents, delighted that there was finally a place — in Cambridge! Run by a real chef! — where children could romp among the lobster tanks and picnic tables while they ate a better-than-decent meal with their hands.”
In 2017, Jasper sold the business and retired. He took to the water, pulling cages of oysters from Island Creek’s beds in Duxbury Bay three days a week. “He supported New England’s seafood industry in every possible way, even when nobody could see it,” said Skip Bennett, the founder of Island Creek Oysters, an oyster farm and distributor in Duxbury, Mass.
His impacts – his cooking, his mentorships, the way he treated people – are ongoing.
Jasper – we celebrate you, sadly, after you left us — way too early, just like Dun. And just like Dun, who admired you greatly, you were larger than life. Dun believed that each of us can make a difference. Jasper certainly made a huge difference for many. If Dun were here, he’d be applauding you the loudest. We all join him and say thank you. We miss you.
2023: Chef Ana Sortun and Farmer Chris Kurth
For Chris, it all started at birth. His family moved to a nineteenth-century Sudbury farmhouse and started settling in. Chris grew up helping tend gardens, fruit trees, and a collage of farm animals his family raised for home consumption. In 1998, after studying biology, philosophy, and environmental studies at Williams College, Farmer Chris started a five-acre CSA farm on his parents’ fields and named it Meadow Brook Farm. After four years of developing Meadow Brook he accepted a farm instructor’s position at The Farm School in Athol, MA.
Now we need to get up to speed on Ana….
Her restaurant career began washing dishes, and after she took a cooking class from a graduate of La Varenne cooking school in Paris, she knew that Paris was her next stop. Not knowing a word of French, Ana spent two years in Seattle learning French before taking off for Paris and LaVarenne. Although she now says she might not have gone if she’d known how tough the classes would be, and how far from perfect her French was – she persevered – working at the school, learning a lot and graduating. Next stop was Boston, where she got a chef position, opening the Aigo Bistro in Concord Mass for the legendary Moncef Meddeb. She moved on to Moncef’s 8 Holyoke and then Casablanca in Cambridge. During her time at Casab, she met her future business partner, Gary Griffin, who managed the bar at Casablanca, and got an introduction to the food that defines her cooking. Sari Abul-Jubein introduced Ana to friends from Turkey he’d met at an Oldways Conference in Crete, and the trip to Turkey that followed was that magical introduction to spices, foods and a cuisine that changed her life. In 2001, Ana and Gary opened Oleana, and it’s been packed by happy diners every since, with Ana winning the James Beard Best Chef in the Northeast in 2005, just 4 years after opening the restaurant.
In 2005, Ana’s and Chris’ daughter, Siena was born. This spawned a new incarnation of the farm – Siena Farms.
Since then, the farm has grown to 75 acres of diversifed produce, serving CSA members, chefs, and retail customers, year-round in Boston’s South End and at the Boston Public Market.
In recent years, Siena Farms launched their beloved Kids’ Farm Share designed to get kids into the kitchen and connected to their food, plus their many and varied versions of Community Sponsored Farm Shares and Employer Sponsored Farm Shares. This made it possible to expand access to Siena Farms produce for households throughout Eastern Massachusetts and New York City.
Always involved with Siena Farms, Ana has also expanded. Ana and her business partner, Executive Pastry Chef Maura Kilpatrick, opened Sofra Bakery & Café in 2008. Then, in 2013, Ana, with chef Cassie Piuma, opened Sarma, a Turkish-style meze tavern. Both are huge successes, busy all the time, with some of the most difficult to get restaurant seats in town. A new Sofra is slated to open in Spring 2024 as part of the Harvard expansion in Allston.
Siena Farms continues to provide produce to the restaurants and underscores Ana’s commitment to fresh ingredients and healthy food. Ana and Chris are generous with their time and efforts, giving to many local charities and needy causes like farms who had experienced great losses with the spring 2023 floods, as well as international ones, such as relief efforts around the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey.
At Oldways, we are grateful for Ana’s efforts as a member of the Board of Directors, and as our most frequent Chef Host of Oldways Culinarias – with five in Turkey, 2 in Greece, 2 in Italy and 1 in Morocco. Learning from Chef Ana is a huge gift.
Ana and Chris We celebrate you individually and together. Thank you from all of us.
2022: Congressman Jim McGovern
Photo courtesy of mcgovern.house.gov
While Congressman Jim McGovern represents the Second District of Massachusetts – central Massachusetts including his home city of Worcester – in the U.S. House of Representatives, he truly represents people all around New England, US and the world.
He is a global leader on the issues of ending hunger, protecting human rights, and promoting peace. He believes politics ought to be about bringing people together, about listening to those who are struggling, and turning his experience into action to make life better for all our families.
As the Boston Globe wrote in a profile of the Congressman on December 31st, “A Washington veteran better known for his tactical maneuvering as outgoing chairman of the lower chamber’s gatekeeping body, the House Rules Committee, McGovern is deeply and visibly passionate about ending hunger in America. He relentlessly presses people of import on it in nearly every conversation, whether with the president, Cabinet secretaries, colleagues in Congress, or advocates.”
Congressman McGovern has had many accomplishments of note since he was elected to the House in 1996 – but we are honoring Congressman McGovern for his critical work in the food arena – efforts that have helped residents of his district, the Commonwealth, New England and the US.
Congressman McGovern has spent decades leading the charge to end hunger in America-working at the local, state, and federal level to fight for change, build awareness, push for legislation to further invest in our anti-hunger safety net, and address policy failures that have created food insecurity. Too many to list today, among the initiatives, legislation and efforts led by Congressman McGovern, two food-related programs stand out:
1. Creating the McGovern-Dole Food program, which provides nutritious meals in a school setting to nearly 9 million of the world’s poorest children.
2. The convening of the second White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health.
There’s so much more distance to travel, and certainly, Congressman McGovern will continue leading the way to fight against hunger, help farmers, and improve life for his constituents, whether they be in the second district, or Mass, the New England region or the country. Dun believed that each of us can make a difference. Congressman McGovern, we know you believe that as well, and you certainly have made a huge difference for many. If Dun were here, he’d be applauding you the loudest. We all join him and say thank you! Read more about Congressman Jim McGovern
2021: Dr. Jessica B. Harris
Educator and culinary historian, Dr. Jessica B. Harris is a longtime friend of Oldways and is a member of Oldways’ African Heritage & Health Advisory Committee with strong ties to New England, as a frequent visitor to Martha’s Vineyard.
Jessica holds a Ph.D. from NYU and is an English professor at Queens College, CUNY. She consults at Dillard University in New Orleans, where she founded the Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. Harris is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and a member of the IACP and Les Dames d’Escoffier. Her articles have appeared in Eating Well, Food & Wine, Essence, and The New Yorker, among other publications, and she has been profiled in The New York Times. Harris has spoken about the food of African Americans on The Today Show, and Good Morning America, and at the Museum of Natural History, and has been a frequent guest at Philadelphia’s The Book and the Cook. In 2004, Harris was awarded the Jack Daniel’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and was also inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s prestigious Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America.
She is the author of twelve cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. Her most recent book is High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, and it has turned into the wildly successful Netflix series. She has written extensively about the culture of Africa in the Americas, lectured widely, and made numerous television appearances. To learn more about Jessica visit Africooks.com.
2020: Russ and Marian Morash
Russ and Marian Morash are pioneers in so many ways-through television, gardening, restaurants and cookbooks.
Russ produced and directed a number of television programs for WGBH, beginning his career with science programs and children’s shows like Science Reporter and Ruth Ann’s Camp. He went on to specialize in DIY programming, including shows such as The French Chef with Julia Child, The Victory Garden, This Old House, and The New Yankee Workshop, among others. He’s won countless Emmys, and the satisfaction that his legacy continues.
Marian first started cooking when Russ began working on The French Chef with Julia Child in 1963. Russ would bring home leftover food from the show and instructions from Julia on how to prepare and cook it. Suddenly, Marian went from cooking her usual tuna fish casserole to preparing things like whole goose stuffed with prunes that were stuffed with foie gras. This marked the beginning of her successful cooking career as a television cook, cookbook author, and restaurant chef.
In 1975, Russ asked Marian to cook vegetables as “Chef Marian” on his show, The Victory Garden. Up until this point, the show taught people how to garden and grow their own vegetables, but with Marian’s added cooking segment, viewers could now learn how to prepare and cook what they grew. Her segment became a hit, and the show inspired Marian to write The Victory Garden cookbook series, the first of which was published in 1982.
The same year that Marian began cooking on The Victory Garden, she and her friend Susan Mayer were approached by Jock and Laine Gifford, friends of theirs who wanted to start a restaurant on the island of Nantucket. The restaurant would not be a professional kitchen, but rather a place that would serve the simple and delicious food Marian and Susan prepared at dinner parties, which Jock and Laine often attended. Marian agreed to give it a try, and the restaurant opened in 1976. She went on to run Straight Wharf Restaurant for 11 years and received the James Beard Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America Award in 1984. For a period of time, Straight Wharf had an all-women kitchen, aside from a young man who shucked oysters. This was unusual for a restaurant in those days-Chef Marian defied the norm and proved just how successful a woman head chef could be.
Read more about the Morash’s.
2019: Jody Adams and Tom Kelly
Jody Adams
With many “best” awards for her food and restaurants, the James Beard Award-winning Chef Jody Adams is proudest of her work advocating for children’s welfare or combating hunger through her support of the Boston Food Bank. In 2010 she received the Humanitarian of the Year Award from Share our Strength. During regular visits to Haiti, she helps to shape and maintain the hospitality programs for Partners in Health facilities. Adams was also inducted to the prestigious James Beard Foundation’s “Who’s Who” list in May of 2018.
Read more about Jody Adams
Dr. Tom Kelly
Dr. Kelly is Executive director of the UNH Sustainability Institute, which he founded in 1997, and the Chief Sustainability Officer of the University of New Hampshire (UNH). Throughout his three decades of national and international work in higher education, Dr. Kelly has focused on sustainability.
He co-edited and authored “The Sustainable Learning Community: One University’s Journey to the Future” (2009), is a founding convener of Food Solutions New England, and is a co-author of A New England Food Vision as well as the 2017 article “Equity as Common Cause: How a Sustainable Food System Network is Cultivating a Commitment to Racial Justice.” He is also a collaborative designer and facilitator of the Food Solutions New England Network Leadership Institute, and a founding convener of the New Hampshire Food Alliance. Additonally, Dr. Kelly was a founding member of the Northeast Campus Sustainability Consortium and the Inter-institutional Network for Food and Agricultural Sustainability (INFAS), a visiting scholar at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego, and a visiting professor of trans-boundary environmental issues in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands at El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico DF.
Read more about Thomas Kelly.
2018: Rebecca Alssid
Rebecca Alssid is a local hero. She didn’t just witness the culinary revolution. She was part of it.
For more than 30 years she created and fostered the culinary program at Boston University. Using her wits and connections in the New England, national and international culinary world she developed a premier experience training students for a culinary certification and offering cooking classes for the greater Boston community. She also ran the evergreen program for adult education, coordinated culinary tours in Europe, created the first Master’s program in gastronomy, and also started the the Liz Bishop wine education program that offers various certifications, and prepares students to go on to take the master sommelier program. Rebecca’s impact goes way beyond local, and she was a head of her time-thousands of students and food enthusiasts from all over the world have benefited from her kind, but tenacious attention to bettering our knowledge of food and wine.
2017: Walter Willett
2017’s winner of the K. Dun Gifford Local Hero Award was a long-time friend and collaborator, Walter Willett of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Here are only a few of his remarkable achievements-accomplishments that have made a difference in the lives and health of people almost everywhere:
At a time when Americans were afraid of fat, with Oldways and colleagues at the HSPH and overseas, Walter helped create the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid, featuring olive oil. He helped popularize using healthy fats like olive oil, nuts, peanuts, and avocados in an overall healthy diet like the Mediterranean Diet, instead of low-fat diets that were actually full of sugar and refined carbohydrates. Walter also led the campaign in the US to get rid of trans fats in our food supply – and he succeeded. In fact, in June 2015, the FDA ruled that artificial trans fats must disappear from the American diet and gave food manufacturers three years to remove the partially-hydrogenated oils from their products. Walter also helped contribute to the fact that the demand for sugar-sweetened beverages is at a 30-year low in the US. Additionally, in today’s world of fake news, Walter is a calm voice of reason, backed by some of the best nutrition research studies, especially ones that he developed with his team at the HSPH (three large-population cohorts following more than 300,00 people).
Walter is still at it every day, speaking up against crazy headlines with solid science and simple explanations. Along with everything else, he’s published more than 1,700 original scientific papers along with the textbook Nutritional Epidemiology and four books with food and cooking advice for the general public.
Read more about Walter Willett.
2016: Frances Moore Lappé
Frances Moore Lappé is a true visionary, pioneer and hero – both local and global. More than forty years ago, Frances Moore Lappé started a revolution in the way Americans think about food and hunger with the publication in 1971 of Diet for a Small Planet. It was the first major book to note the environmental impact of food production and to offer solutions. It’s called a classic reference for people who want to follow a diet based on plants.
Since then she’s written and co-authored 17 more books about world hunger, living democracy and the environment. With her daughter, Anna, she founded the Small Planet Institute, which focuses on solutions: From the crisis of needless hunger to that of democracy itself, the Institute offers evidence-based solutions.
As you can imagine this is not her first award – but we hope this one is as meaningful for her as it is for Oldways. As a huge admirer of Frances and the impact her books and work have made, Dun would have been thrilled to know Frances was the first awardee of an award with his name.
Read more about Frances.
Louisa Kasdon 
