Because I was certain the food served at the Nebula Awards banquet in Chicago Saturday night would be barely edible at best and not at all edible at worst, I was determined to at least have a decent—nay, superior!—lunch so not all my meals that day would feel wasted. And I found that superior lunch at Big Jones, which I discovered thanks to a post which ran two weeks ago over at Eater.

Chef Paul Fehribach (whose food I was so taken with that I bought a copy of his cookbook as soon as the meal was over and had him autograph it) has long been in love with Southern cooking, and has dedicated his life to tracking down historic recipes and presenting food as it originally was. No molecular gastronomy or deconstructed dishes here! Not that there’s anything wrong with those, as visitors to this blog know, but I love the idea of experiencing the cooking of early last century, and even the centuries before that.

So I took off from the Nebulas with Jaym Gates and Lee Whiteside and headed over to Big Jones, where we were joined by Chicago local Eden Robins, with whom I’ve been trying to share a meal for years. Well, it finally happened (as you can see above) and, as it turned out, in one of her favorite restaurants, too.

It took Big Jones to bring us together.

And a wonderful meal it was, which began with …

Beignets

It turns out that every meal at Big Jones begins with complimentary fresh (and delicious!) beignets, which as I learned from The Big Jones Cookbook, Fehribach refuses to sell, or even provide gratis as part of take-out orders or catering jobs. “Our official policy,” he wrote, “is they never leave the restaurant.”

Now there’s a chef who appreciates freshness.

When the Nebulas are in Chicago again next year, it would be worth a return trip just for the beignets alone.

Sally Lunn bread

Before I knew those beignets would be coming, I ordered some Sally Lunn bread for the table. I could have ordered biscuits or popovers, but I decided I needed to try a bread I’d never experienced.

Fehribach writes that it “has been popular since the earliest cookbooks from the antebellum period.” And with a taste and texture nearer to cake than bread, I can see why.

Eugene’s Breakfast in Mobile, circa 1930

As for my entree, I’d made up my mind long before I walked through the from door. A dish with a name like “Eugene’s Breakfast in Mobile, circa 1930” was hard to resist. And resisting the description of “farm-raised Alabama catfish fried in gold rice and corn flour breading with fried plantains, black beans, and buttered aromatic southern rice” was even harder.

Thanks, Eugene, whoever you were. Your breakfast was definitely comfort food with a strong sense of place.

Galas, circa 1890

When it came to sharing a dessert, time traveling back 125 years seemed like the only logical choice. I’m sure any of the other desserts would have been equally tasty, but I had come, after all, for a culinary history lesson, and so we ordered “hot sourdough rice fritters in the old Creole way, cane molasses, vanilla bean ice cream.” If only all history lessons were this appetizing.

Take note, attendees of the Nebulas Awards weekend when it returns to Chicago in 2016—you’ll definitely want to put a meal at Big Jones on your agenda.

And in case of you were wondering … the banquet food later that night?

It was exactly as I’d expected.