Chef BJ Dennis, widely recognized for his commitment to preserving the Gullah Geechee culinary tradition, will be featured on this week’s episode of Savor the City, airing Thursday, May 22 at 8 p.m. ET on TV One.
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The series, hosted by celebrity chef and cookbook author Chef Jernard Wells, takes viewers on a cultural and culinary journey through historically Black neighborhoods, uncovering the people and flavors that define Black America. For its Charleston episode, the show turns its attention to the Lowcountry—a hub of Gullah culture—and highlights Dennis’s decades-long mission to reclaim and preserve a legacy that is too often overlooked or misunderstood.
Filmed on location at Aaron’s Seafood in North Charleston, the episode offers more than a showcase of local cuisine. It’s a conversation about survival, identity, and the ways Black Southern traditions have shaped—and been erased from—the mainstream culinary canon. In a moving exchange with Wells, Dennis unpacks the origin of the Gullah language and the deliberate attempts to suppress it after the Civil War.
“Gullah, in its purest form, is a pure African Creole language,” Dennis explains. “That language was pretty much taught out of people right after the Civil War by abolitionists and people from the North, who thought they were teaching the people how to speak properly. But they had a whole language.”
Chef BJ Dennis is no stranger to speaking the truth, whether through his words or his food. A cultural historian and culinary preservationist, Dennis has built his career on connecting modern audiences to ancestral knowledge—one plate at a time. As he reminds viewers in the episode, Gullah culture is not folklore. It’s a living, breathing presence in the Lowcountry and beyond.
“We made this city everything that this city loves,” he says. “From the haint blue you see on doors and window sills, to the food, to the spirituals— comes from our culture. And we take pride in that. Because if we don’t take pride in it… they’ll take it from us and resell it to us.”
That insight sits at the core of Dennis’s work—and it’s exactly why I Love Us sat down with him in October 2024 to talk about foodways, ancestry, and the spiritual weight of Gullah survival. In our feature, he spoke candidly about honoring his lineage while navigating a world that often commodifies culture without context.
Now, Savor the City brings that conversation to a wider audience. The series itself draws inspiration from The Negro Motorist Green Book, functioning as a cultural road map and storytelling platform for Black chefs and entrepreneurs across the U.S. Previous episodes have spotlighted communities in Baltimore, Houston, and Birmingham. This episode on Charleston—and the Gullah corridor it anchors—shares the distinct weight the city carries in the African American story.
Executive produced by Rochelle Brown of Powerhouse Productions, the show has earned praise for its balance of storytelling and substance. For Dennis, the care behind the camera mattered just as much as the content on screen.
“Much respect and love… I would shoot shows with y’all any time, any day,” he shared.
In a time when media often tokenizes Black food or flattens it into trend pieces, Dennis’s presence on Savor the City offers something richer: depth. Intention. Legacy. His message, shaped by years of community-based work and historical research, is one that resonates far beyond Charleston.
“This work is hard. I’m not gonna lie,” he says. “But myself and others have made a point to stay here in the Lowcountry because there’s power in this city. You gotta tap in.”
At a time when Charleston’s tourism industry profits off Gullah aesthetics while many descendants are priced out of their neighborhoods, his decision to remain rooted is an act of resistance.
This week’s episode of Savor the City reminds us that food is memory, migration, and meaning. Thanks to voices like Chef BJ Dennis, that meaning is reaching new audiences without being stripped of its truth.
Savor the City airs Thursday, May 22 at 8 p.m. EST on TV One.
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Cover photo: TV One’s Savor the City to Feature Chef BJ Dennis in Charleston Episode / Credit: Mic Smith
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