Queen of Southern Cooking: Nathalie Evelyn Meyer Dupree, Award Winning Author and TV Personality and Founding Chairman of the Charleston Wine + Food Festival passes away at 85

Nathalie Dupree, award-winning cookbook author and television personality, died Monday, January 13, 2025, in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was 85 years old. 

Crowned the Queen of Southern Cooking by Southern Living magazine, she became a national culinary figure with the debut of her PBS series New Southern Cooking in 1985. The companion cookbook to the series has been reprinted more than 25 times and is still in print today.

A beloved host on PBS, The Food Network, and The Learning Channel, she was a champion of home cooking and putting the novice cook at ease. Her quips and messy foibles in the kitchen endeared her to legions of fans. Applying French techniques, she learned in culinary school to the bounty of the southern garden, market, rivers and ocean, she lifted the profile of southern food to a national audience. Her 15 cookbooks stand as reliable guides for the home cook filled with what she called “do-able” recipes.

Dupree devoted herself to being a catalyst for the elevation of women in the culinary industry. Known as her “chickens,” she offered culinary internships where students would participate in testing, writing and developing recipes and work behind the scenes on her TV shows. Many have gone on to have stellar culinary careers, including Virginia Willis and Rebecca Lang.

In 1978, she co-founded the International Association of Culinary Professionals along with Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, and Martin Yan. She was the founding Chairman of the Charleston Wine + Food Festival and a founder and board member of the Southern Foodways Alliance. In 2004, the Southern Foodways Alliance presented her with its Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award. Her love of mentorship led her to founding numerous chapters of Les Dames d’Escoffier, an international association for women dedicated to advancing women in the culinary industry. In 2011, it bestowed Dupree with its highest honor of Grande Dame for her achievements. The Maître Cuisiniers de France presented Dupree with its 2013 Woman of the Year award.

She earned three James Beard Foundation Media Awards, including one for the her largest work, Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking co-authored with Cynthia Graubart. She was presented with a fourth award as Who’s Who in Food and Beverage in America in 2015. 

Born in Hamilton, New Jersey on December 23, 1939, she spent her early years in Virginia and by the age of 20 developed a taste for politics as the youngest precinct captain for John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960. She would go on to run for office herself in 2010 as a write-in candidate against incumbent South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint.

Her career in food began when she cooked in a co-op house in college. It was a disastrous beginning, but after earning her certificate at Le Cordon Bleu, and operating the kitchen in a restaurant in Majorca, Spain, she opened her eponymous restaurant with her then-husband David Dupree. Located in the back of an antique shop in Covington, Georgia, it became a destination restaurant for Atlantans.

Dupree made her mark in Atlanta as the director of the first participation cooking school in the south at the flagship downtown location of Rich’s department store where she taught more than 10,000 students, and started her television career on the local program, PM Magazine.

Her pork chop theory guided her work with others throughout the culinary world; one pork chop in a pan goes dry, but two in a pan have the fat to feed each other. It helped turn around what was once thought to be competition for limited resources for women to foster community and lift each other, creating even more opportunities.

In 1994, she met and married Jack Bass, a historian and author. Their home was filled not only mountains of cookbooks, sets of china, loads of enviable cookware and travel mementos, but also with visiting dignitaries, politicos, and authors, with guests feasting on her recipe testing and was a bustling center of activity. 

She leaves behind her beloved husband Jack Bass and their children Audrey Thiault (Pierre-Henri), Ken Bass (Antoinette), David Bass (Bonnie), and Liz Broadway (Joel), sister Marie Louise Meyer, brother James Gordon Meyer (Nancy June), seven grandchildren, and who she referred to as her “favorite former-husband,” David Dupree.

Local residents in Raleigh are invited to a brief memorial service at The Cardinal at North Hills, 4030 Cardinal at North Hills Street, Raleigh, NC 27609, on Saturday, January 18, 2025, at 2:00 pm.

A memorial service will be held at Meadows Funeral Home on Saturday, February 22 at 2:00 pm, located at 760 Highway 11 SE, Monroe Georgia. 

In lieu of flowers, donations to the Atlanta Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier Scholarship Fund (www.ldeiatlanta.org) are welcome to further the careers of young female culinarians.

Arrangements in Raleigh are in the care of Brown-Wynne, 300 Saint Mary’s Street.

Source: Dignity Memorial Raleigh