Where Can I Buy Mustard Greens in Albany Ny
Emrys Young, owner of Kitchen 216, poses in the restaurant in 2019.
Paul Buckowski
Editor's note: During Black History Month, the Times Union is sharing stories from its archive highlighting significant people, places and events that are part of the Capital Region's Black cultural heritage. This story was first published on July 3, 2019.
When 2019's Times Union Best Of poll winners were released, the Southern food category had a glaring omission: the African-American female-led restaurants in the Capital Region that are upholding the traditions of the South in every plate of collard greens, fried chicken and sweet potato pie they serve.
Hattie's of Saratoga Springs won top honors in the readers' poll, followed by Texas Roadhouse, Dinosaur BBQ, the Cuckoo's Nest, and Pig Pit BBQ. The commonality between each of these five restaurants is that they are all owned or co-owned by white men, who do not exclusively have Southern roots. While Hattie's maintains the recipes and legacy of Hattie Gray, the black woman from Louisiana who opened the restaurant in 1938, none of the other restaurants acknowledge the influence black women have on the origins of the food.
But first, a history lesson on the origins of the food. James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller, known best as the "soul food scholar," says that while Southern food and soul food are often thought of as one cuisine, their are differences. Southern food means anything from that region, while soul food is the "mother cuisine," he said, based on the cooking of slaves in the antebellum Southern states, and is what Southern food derives from. There is overlap in the cuisines, but a split in the terms (and the popularization of the term "soul food") occurred in the 1960s when, "there was a conscious effort to cast soul food as something different," due to black power advocacy, Miller said. Soul food gained the perception of being food of poor, black Americans, while Southern food never garnered that connotation.
"Southern food is hot and trendy and the white people making that food are the ones who are celebrated," he said.
Amanda "Ya Ya" Thompson, owner of Ya Ya's House of Southern Cuisine on Broadway in Schenectady, said the issues of culture and race in the restaurant industry mirror the rest of business in America. "Accessibility (to awards) is for the people who are already in the industry. They are just adding a Southern component. If they can add a component of the South, they can call it Southern food," she said.
Nationally, black women like Edna Lewis, who died in 2006 and brought light to the importance of African-American culture to Southern cooking, and Leah Chase, the black creole woman who ran the famed Dookey Chase restaurant in New Orleans for decades and passed away this year, have become touchstones of American cuisine, but the recognition of black female chefs has lagged. It wasn't until 2018 that a black female chef — Nina Compton — won for best chef in the Southern category at the James Beard Awards, heralded as a top prize in the American food industry. Until that point only five black chefs had ever been nominated for best chef since the inception of the award in 1990. (This year, Mashama Bailey was the second woman of color to win a regional James Beard best chef award.)
"White men don't have the best soul food in the area. That's the problem," said Emrys Young, the owner and chef of Kitchen 216 on Central Avenue in Albany. She said that soul food isn't only for black people to sell and enjoy, but "a lot of people aren't coming to Clinton Avenue. What is winning is what was available to people in their areas."
On the local restaurants mentioned in this story:
Kizzy Williams of Allie B's Cozy Kitchen
353 Clinton Ave., Albany
alliebscozykitchen.com
Year opened: 2015
Style of Southern cuisine: South Carolina-style, with few seasonings and lots of earthy flavor
Most loved menu item: Collard greens with smoked turkey, which usually sells out by 5 p.m. each day
Emrys Young of Kitchen 216
85 Central Ave., Albany
facebook.com/kitchen216
Year opened: Lark Street location opened 2017, then moved to Central Avenue in 2019
Style of Southern cuisine: Jamaican-infused "modern soul," with no pork products used, all halal-certified meat, and vegan options available
Most loved menu item: Blackened or Cajun salmon
Amanda "Ya Ya" Thompson of Ya Ya's House Southern Cuisine
135 Broadway, Schenectady
facebook.com/yayasoutherncuisine
Year opened: 2015 in LaFayette location, 2017 Broadway location
Style of Southern cuisine: Mississippi-influenced with fresh ingredients and vegetables peeled and cut by hand daily
Most loved menu item: Braised oxtail with rice and beans on Saturdays, which sells out each week.
"In the South, it doesn't matter what door you knock on, they all have the same food," said Kizzy Williams, owner and chef at Allie B's Cozy Kitchen on Clinton Avenue in Albany. The majority of her customers before 5 p.m. are white, and food delivery orders come from predominantly white neighborhoods in and around Albany.
Williams said the food of the South belongs to both cultures, "and that's why we have Paula Deen." For her, problems arise when the black women who created the food are erased from the conversation. "For white men, it is an environment of trust. White men are able to communicate just by looking at each other. Most of the time when I see that, the food isn't very good. But it lets me know that here in America, you can do anything," Williams said. "They should have a visible woman cooking the soul food. The problem is who [white restaurateurs] are showcasing. They don't give anything to the African-American woman, and it only takes the white man to give it."
Factors like small-business financing and media attention help entrench the divide between white-run Southern restaurants and the black women that give the cuisine its identity. "African-Americans are often undercapitalized," said Miller, adding that he urges black-owned restaurants to include marketing expenses in their business plans because a robust online presence is necessary to reach audiences outside of their immediate community. "The media plays a big role in this. The people in the media decide what stories need to be told," he said.
When Young first opened Kitchen 216 on Lark Street in 2017, she had a line out the door but said there was no major media attention granted to it. "The news never came. What is it about progressive black business that you are avoiding? I'm what's happening in your community," she said. Last year, she won the best chef award from local urban radio station Hot 99.1, based on nominations and call-ins from the urban community she serves, but realizes those people might not be engaging with other media outlets.
"We have this thing where you have to be acknowledged by white people or a person of position in order to succeed," said Young. "We are in an era of black businesses popping up. There is a process to growth but we don't know it because we don't come from it," she said.
The issue of cultural appropriation (the term used for the adoption of one culture's customs or ideas by a more dominant or privileged group or person) is rampant in Southern and soul food, and the question of authenticity is difficult to place boundaries on. Miller proposed guidelines on determining what is genuine for Southern and soul food when he said, "Anyone can make the cuisine as long as they hit the flavor profile, respect the ingredients and tradition from which it comes and give a nod to the originators."
"Who gets to make the decision about what is authentic? Food is the one thing that unites us all, and I've never heard anyone say they don't eat, but it is unfortunate that other groups looking for soul food don't know about authentic soul food," said Young.
For the women behind that food in the Capital Region, the time has come for recognition. Soul food that reflects the journey of slave-run kitchens, post-slavery cooking and the movement of African-Americans to Western and Northern cities during the great migrations of the 20th century abounds in the Capital Region, but as Thompson said, "you just have to search for it."
Deanna Fox is a food and agriculture journalist. @DeannaNFox, foxonfood.com
Where Can I Buy Mustard Greens in Albany Ny
Source: https://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Cooking-with-soul-14069742.php
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