Who's talking about food?

Sometimes Charlotte gets skipped by food lecturers, who head straight to Raleigh for A Southern Season or Asheville for . . . Asheville. But we suddenly have a full March calendar of intriguing speakers headed our way. 

I'll have longer interviews with these folks and details on ticket sales coming up, but I wanted to get them on your radar and your calendar:

March 9 & 10: Toni Tipton Martin. Based in Austin, Martin is a food journalist and author with a long list of credits, including first black food editor at the Cleveland Plain-Dealer many years ago and a founding member and former present of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Her current project is "The Jemima Code," a book and traveling photo exhibition about the contributions of African-American women to American foodways. She'll speak at 4 p.m. March 9 at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, and 7 p.m. March 10 at the Levine Museum of the New South. 

March 18: Dr. Marion Nestle. Nestle is a professor of food science at New York University and a prolific author of books on the food industry, food politics and nutrition. She's also a daily blogger for her must-read website Food Politics. She'll be at UNC Charlotte's Center City campus as the annual TIAA Cref Distinguished Lecturer.

March 27: Ruth Reichl. The former restaurant reviewer of The New York Times and the former editor of Gourmet magazine, she also has a series of memoirs about her food career, including "Comfort Me With Apples," and she has now branched into fiction with "Delicious!", a novel coming out in May. She's also known for her haiku-like food Tweets that helped to spawn the parody Twitter feed Ruth Bourdain. She'll be the Jewish Federation's 16th annual spring lecturer. 

And finally, closer to home, Tom Hanchett, the curator of the Levine Museum of the New South, will give a talk based on his "Food From Home" columns for The Observer, at 3 p.m. March 16 at the Duke Mansion. It's free, but reservations are required. Email  kellis@tlwf.org or call 704-714-4445.