Gravy: Fall 2025

Many of the stories in this Fall 2025 issue of Gravy track movement across distance and through time, examining the objects and practices people carry with them and those they leave behind. 

Immigrants to new countries adapt and pass on family recipes. Newly cohabitating couples merge family heirlooms, choosing which pieces to use in their shared life and which to sell, store, or give away. Expatriates find the tastes, smells, and sounds of home in new cities an ocean away, thanks to the entrepreneurial countrymen who arrived before them. 

“I worked in archives for most of my career, but it wasn’t until I shared a home with my husband that I learned how we live in them too,” writes Martin Padgett in his feature, “Object Permanence.” He catalogs the objects we live with actively, those we tolerate like inanimate roommates, and those we give away, sometimes to make room for the new. Ali Domrongchai shares her Thai grandmother’s dumpling recipe and the story behind it. Gavin Colton writes of finding pieces of his Irish home in his adopted city of Lexington, Kentucky, where the horse-racing industry has drawn a community of expatriates from the Emerald Isle. 

Elsewhere in the issue, Gregory Emilio praises Kimball House in Decatur, Georgia, and chronicles how the restaurant evolved from buzzy newcomer to mature stalwart thanks to its commitment to hospitality. Joshua Carlucci profiles the unlikely collaboration of a North Mississippi livestock farmer and a West Memphis casino chef. Irina Zhorov documents recreational fishing along the Mobile Bay Causeway in text and photos. 

The issue also includes poetry by Gaylord Brewer and Silas House and an excerpt from Michael Twitty’s new cookbook, Recipes from the American South, fit for a Thanksgiving feast.

The cover illustration is by Matt Rota.