From perches at two favorite Oxford bars, over drinks with Joe Stinchcomb at St. Leo and John “Coonie” Spreafico at City Grocery, TrueSouth asks questions about the restaurants we have come to know and love while making two previous seasons of this show. In the midst of a brutal pandemic that puts restaurants at risk, we check in on the people who steward these institutions. We take stock of what we have missed, and what we gain as they reopen. In a moment when few of us stray far from home, TrueSouth celebrates its own backyard. Even as we look to the highway, hungry for diversion, anxious for escape, what we discover when we hit the road is both sobering and inspiring.

TrueSouth explores small town visions in Brownsville, Tenn., home to Helen's Bar-B-Que, owned by Helen Turner, and City Fish Market, owned by Larry Davis. Two art projects help define the town: The Mindfield, Billy Tripp's 30-year sculpture effort that towers over downtown, and Master Barber Shop Menagerie Museum, owned by Anthony Turner. What happens when an old vision for a town fades? What new visions take hold and how do they serve a town? TrueSouth asks those questions when we land in Brownsville. Featuring music by, among others, Valerie June, born just down the road in Jackson.

We explore Columbus, Ga., and Phenix City, Ala., backyards for the base, on opposite sides of the Chattahoochee River. At the 14th Street Grill, on the Alabama side, we join owner Martha Gothard to eat half weenies, cut longways, smothered with chili and slaw, the diet of cotton mill workers past. Over in Columbus, at the back gate of the base, we gather with Rose Collins, owner of Rose’s Caribbean, for jerk pork, jerk chicken and coconut peas. She talks to TrueSouth about Saint Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, where she grew up, and what drives her to feed hungry American troops today.

Bowman, SC, birthplace and burial place of Mary Beverly Evans Edge, mother of host John T. Edge. On the Edisto River, at a fish camp like the one her father built, beneath the boughs of moss-draped oaks, Edge will reconnect with his family’s roots and face down his mother’s complicated legacy over liver pudding with grits and catfish stew with rice.