VOL 26 ISSUE 45, Nov. 10, 2025
Main caption: Delaware North’s Director of Culinary for Gaming, Josh Marling (left), discussed the transformation of Southland Casino Hotel’s culinary offerings, including a partnership with local farmer Marshall Bartlett (right), in a recent article in the Southern Food Alliance’s Gravy publication.
Josh Marling, director of culinary for Delaware North’s Gaming division, was recently featured in Gravy, the journal and podcast of the Southern Foodways Alliance.
The Southern Foodways Alliance is a nonprofit institute based in the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture that documents, studies and explores the diverse food cultures of the changing American South.
The article highlights the transformation of the culinary offerings at Southland Casino Hotel, Delaware North’s superregional gaming location in West Memphis, Ark., where Marling served as executive chef for a decade before transitioning to his current role.
It also provides an in-depth look at the partnership Marling developed with a local farmer and the founder of Home Place Pastures in Como, Miss.
Excerpts from the article are below. Click here for the full print story or view online.
Marling has spent nearly a decade transforming Southland’s food program into something singular, something rooted. Where other casinos lean into illusion – masking inferior ingredients under flashy sauces, contrived and outdated haute cuisine or gimmicky “international” labels – Marling leans into place.
“I always thought I knew how to cook until I came to this property and moved to this area,” Marling says. “But I got a completely different understanding of food. In the North, you boil things. In the South, we smoke things. And here, we learn soul.”
There’s something profound in the juxtaposition – Southland’s constant neon buzz against Home Place’s still, humid expanse. But deeper still is the connective tissue: two men with wildly different businesses, both committed to a food system that honors origin and process. One supplies the raw beauty of the South’s agricultural potential; the other proves that even in the high-volume machine of a casino, that beauty can be preserved, celebrated and served.