Editor's note: The Southern Foodways Alliance delves deep in the history, tradition, heroes and plain old deliciousness of Southern food.

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The Southern Foodways Alliance presents Counter Histories, a series of short films documenting the struggle to desegregate Southern restaurants in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Editor's note: This piece was originally published in the Southern Foodways Alliance's Gravy Foodletter #42. Today's installment comes courtesy of Kat Kinsman, managing editor of CNN Eatocracy.

Several stories above Manhattan's Central Park, there hangs a three-Michelin-starred, monstrously expensive restaurant that an awful lot of people think is perfect. I may have thought that, too, at one point, but I know it's not, because I've been to the K&W Cafeteria.

Actually, I'm going to back that up and admit out loud in public that I have in fact boarded a plane, rented a hotel room, and stayed overnight in a city several states away for the express purpose of sitting down with a groaning tray of K&W chicken livers, fried okra, collard greens, and vegetable congeal and eating my greedy head off.

Yes, I made some preemptory noises about going to visit a couple of old friends who live in relative proximity to a K&W. I brought them along with me so I could steal hush puppies off their plates. And their child's. I have no shame. And the trip cost just slightly less than my single meal at the aforementioned palace of gastronomic fanciness.

There clearly are many, many things wrong with me as a human being, but if you've ever eaten at a K&W, you know my love of the place is not one of them.

That wasn't always the case. Though a Sunday apres-church K&W dining room is now typically a multi-racial, transgenerational, pan-denominational assembly of Southerners possessed of a great appreciation for fancy church hats and rock-bottom prices, in the early 1960s, several outposts found themselves at the center of the battle over segregation.
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A reading from the works of noted gourmands Vincent and Mary Price, from their 1965 cookbook "A Treasury of Great Recipes":

"If there is one restaurant that epitomizes New York today it is The Four Seasons. Sophisticated, urbane, expensive, its stark geometry reflects that city of skyscrapers. Nature is permitted to intrude, as it does on the city itself, in seasonal paintings that scarcely affect the austere architecture. New Yorkers who dine at The Four Seasons know which season has arrived by the plants in the window baskets. Who needs a calendar?"

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The Vintage Cookbook Vault highlights recipes from my insane stash of books and pamphlets from the early 20th century onward. It's a semi-regular thing.

Well, ain't that a kick in the palate? Some of the country may be getting socked with snow, but the lack of a grill wouldn't have gotten in ol' Dino's way if he wanted a burger. No siree. And he didn't need no fancy-schmancy hardwood lump charcoal, grass-fed heirloom bison, artisanal mustard, or even a bun for that matter.

Per his recipe from The Celebrity Cookbook, edited by Ms Dinah Shore in 1996, this Rat Packer needed little more than a pan, a pinch of salt, and a shot of Kentucky's finest when he wanted to get his beef on.
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