For Local Author and Chef, Food is Fate

The other night, Sara Levy decided to have an “easy” dinner: Cream of onion soup with caramelized onions to start, Cornish hens with a tarragon sauce and roasted Brussels sprouts.

Levy, a self-taught chef and former kitchen manager for southern cooking icon Nathalie Dupree, is author of the "Big Green Egg Cookbook.” The book is a tome that explores the myriad options for cooking with the smoker and grill that has a cult following. Last summer 50,000 copies were printed when it hit the shelves. And it was devised, cooked and photographed in her historic Norcross home.

For Levy, a career in food writing was not a thing that she carefully plotted but a series of serendipitous twists of fate. “I never tried to do anything in the food world,” Levy said, “It just happened to me.” 

Levy can remember the exact moment when she fell in love: She was helping her older sister prepare a Julia Childs’ recipe for Shrimp Mousse or Terrine. “I remember I was amazed that you could use shrimp shells for make a stock,” she said. Levy worked her way through two of Childs’ books, teaching her self the classics. And that was way before Julie Powell popularized the idea.  

Levy was happily cooking for herself and her family—“The most important people to cook for”—when one of the first twists came in the form of a mysterious phone call. An old friend of her husband Pierre Levy’s from South Africa had moved to Atlanta—and, they discovered, she moved in right across the street. After a dinner party, Levy discovered that the woman was a food stylist, a person to cooks and preens food for photo shoots.  The woman implored her to go into food styling. “I basically just ignored her,” said Levy.

Later, to earn some extra cash, Levy had decided to take a retail job at the now-shuttered Rolling Pin in Perimeter Mall. The South African woman came into the shop--again, by chance--and offered her a freelance gig at Atlanta magazine. This time Levy couldn’t say no. “I had to do a low-country boil and set it up in a colander,” she said. “I’ll never forget it.” She said crawfish made an awful noise when they were thrown in the water. She just muttered, “God forgive me,” as she tossed each one in.

Even so, she was hooked. When Levy looked into the camera at that shoot she could instinctively see what looked right. “I don’t know why, but I just knew how to do it,” she said over tea on a recent afternoon.

Another gift of fortune came when Nathalie Dupree called her, “out of the blue” as she describes it, to ask her to be her kitchen director. It’s a dream job for a budding chef. “She’s the Kevin Bacon of the food world,” said Levy, everyone who is involved with southern food is somehow tied to her. “I learned so much,” Levy said of the experience. “She’s one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever met.”

The latest stroke of fortune came when she was asked to do her first book last February, the "Big Green Egg Cookbook.” It was a harrowing task. In just four months, more than 183 recipes were dreamed up, cooked, tested and edited. “The process was just insane,” she said. Levy would wake up early to make a plan and stay up in the guest bedroom in her home until 3 a.m. typing up the final product.  She said the process was hard on her—and that if there’s a next time, it will be on her terms.

Her husband, Pierre Levy, says that his wife is being humble. "She has really elevated the art of southern cooking," he said, so don't let her pretend it wasn't all in her hard work.