Image by Lesley Davis for The New York Times

Image by Lesley Davis for The New York Times

About

Erika Council is the charismatic food writer, recipe developer and photographer behind the popular website, Southern Soufflé. It is here the reader is taken through a brilliantly southern focused epic, with tales of food, love and freedom.  Erika has become a fixture in the southern culinary world with her popular Biscuit Company Bomb Biscuit Co. in Atlanta GA.  Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Sauver, (where she was nominated 2016 Best of the Food Blog awards for writing), Food and Wine Magazine, The Local Palate Magazine, Atlanta Magazine, Food 52, Complex Magazine, Design Sponge, The Kitchn, Essence Magazine, Huffington Post, and Yahoo. 

In 2016 she was invited to be a guest chef for the James Beard FoundationsSunday Supper South, a sold out event  hosted by award winning chef and restaurateur Anne Quatrano.  Every year this event highlights the south's best, up and coming chefs.   

She has also develops recipes for brands such as KitchenAid, Reynolds Wrap, Nutella and many others.  

Council has contributed to several cookbooks,  Feed the Resistance  By Juila Turshen (Chronicle Books) , Soulby Todd Richards (Oxmoor House), Sunday Suppersby Cynthia Graubart (Oxmoor House) and is a contributing author of Beyond The Plate  ( Prestel Publishing).

A highlight in her repertoire was being featured in the New York Times’ groundbreaking piece , An American Thanksgiving.     

Outside of the kitchen, Erika has become a sought after voice on the topic of African American food, social justice and food's impact on community. One such event is speaking at the Southern Foodways Alliance, the organization that is preserving the foodways of the south. She can also be found at The Atlanta History Center,  hosting cooking demos and Sunday Suppers and speaking on the history of African American Cuisine and the social impact food has on communities. 

Erika, currently a resident of Atlanta Georgia, is a native of North Carolina, attributing her passion for food and community to her grandmothers. One of these grandmothers, Mildred (Mama Dip) Council, is a southern cooking icon, award winning cookbook author and owner of the famous Mama Dip’s Kitchen Restaurantin Chapel Hill, North Carolina.