Foodies Clan

Kwangjuyo makes traditional Korean ceramic dishes, bowls, and cups for restaurants like The French Laundry and Jungsik 

Kwangjuyo is a ceramics company known for making 3,000 varieties of Korean ceramic cups, bowls, and plates, using traditional hand-made methods that are uncommon today. The company’s approach, which includes shaping the pieces from clay, carving floral designs, and custom glazing, all stem from Korean tradition.

First, the clay is mixed to reduce air bubbles. It then heads to the wheel, where it will be shaped into varying dishes. Once the basic shape is formed, it’s put in a heated area and is dried for two hours before the final touches are added to the shape. Next, hand-carved designs are etched into the clay using traditional methods called Sanggam and Bakji. These techniques are uncommon in modern times, since their processes are too delicate and complicated for machines to automate. The pieces are then moved to a kiln set at 900 degrees for seven hours.

Next, glazes are mixed, requiring a number of powders, sands, and clays. The materials are ground for six to 12 hours before pieces are individually hand-dipped in the finished liquid. They then make their way to the kiln for a second firing at about 1,300 degrees for 12 hours.

The pieces go through a final inspection, and are then shipped to people’s homes and restaurants. Many of Kwangjuyo’s tableware pieces have made their way to Michelin-starred restaurants like The French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley and Jungsik in New York City.

At first glance, it definitely doesn’t look like an adequate representation of the city’s signature dish

Food distribution locations have been out of reach for many Black and Latinx families

This story was originally published on Civil Eats.

As an attorney working on school desegregation cases in the South, GeDá Jones Herbert is intimately familiar with inequities and discrimination that Black families face on a regular basis. And when schools began shutting down in-person instruction last March due to the pandemic, she heard from many of her clients.

“We knew that [the pandemic] was going to have a huge impact on the lives of our clients and students across the country,” said Herbert, who is based in New Orleans and works primarily on cases in Louisiana and Alabama. “As we were assessing the closures, the things we were really looking at were access to distance learning . . . and food and nutrition.”

Her team at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) zeroed in specifically on the connection between meal access and race. The education lawyers knew many students from low-income families depended on school meals for adequate nutrition. In 2019, more than 29 million children ate free and reduced-price school lunches daily. In the communities LDF was working in, they also knew that a disproportionate number of those students were Black.

Once COVID-19 began its spread early last year, school nutrition departments across the country began scrambling to continue serving meals in various ways. After waivers from the federal government allowed them to make changes like packaging meals to go, some districts set up pick-up sites, and others used bus drivers to deliver meals. But many districts began going broke in the process, and others faced COVID outbreaks. In response, some districts limited pick-up site operation to just a few hours a week, and others stopped serving meals altogether.

Herbert and her team argued that several districts that ceased meal service were violating civil rights laws, because such a high proportion of students eating the subsidized meals were Black. Even in places where meals were offered, limitations like site location and pick-up times prevented many Black families from accessing them.

LDF sent letters to the governors of Louisiana and Alabama detailing their legal arguments and sharing what they were hearing from clients. “A child without access to transportation by car in the Four Corners neighborhood in St. Mary Parish [southwest of New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico] would have had to walk four hours each way to get to the nearest ‘Grab n Go’ site, each of which was open for a mere hour and a half,” one letter read. “Even after the district eventually added a Baldwin site, children in the Four Corners neighborhood still would have had to walk two hours each way to pick up their breakfast and lunch.”

In Leeds, Alabama, schools stopped providing meals entirely on April 2. LDF sued the district there, forcing it to restart meal service. LDF’s efforts caught the attention of researchers at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of North Carolina. They began working on several projects that looked at whether access to school meals during the pandemic was affected by race.

The situation gained the attention of several members of Congress as well. In June, Representative Bobby Scott (D-Virginia), chairman of the Committee On Education and Labor, sent a letter to former Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. “I am concerned that during this pandemic, many Black and other children of color are left hungry due to inadequate access to school meals,” he wrote, noting a dire statistic: During March and April, the rate of food insecurity for Black households was double that of white households.

Since then, districts across the country — including those LDF is monitoring — have gotten better at streamlining pandemic meal services, giving more students access to food. And schools are back in session in some areas. But racial discrepancies still exist.

In December, the Urban Institute reported 40 percent of Black families with school-age children were food insecure in September, compared to 15 percent of white families. Meanwhile, nearly two thirds of all families reported that their children were not receiving meals from schools. “These data suggest that a significant portion of vulnerable children may not be benefiting from school-based nutrition resources amid the shifting mix of virtual and hybrid instruction,” the report noted.

And while school meal access may not be as stark an issue as it was just months ago, Herbert and other experts say questions of how to guarantee equitable access to school meals — and whether the current system does enough to consider race — are more pressing than ever.

“Just because a system has been put in place and people are maintaining it for now doesn’t mean that the problem is solved,” she said. “This is going to continue to be an issue, so we really have to develop some longer-term solutions.”

Mapping meal sites

When schools shut down, researchers around the country who focus on school meal programs began sharing resources and chatting online about what they were seeing. Julia McCarthy is the interim deputy director of the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy at Columbia University. She formed a research team with Caroline Glagola Dunn at Harvard and Jared McGuirt at the University of North Carolina Greensboro to begin studying school meal access across the country.

When she saw LDF’s letter to the governor of Louisiana, McCarthy was shocked. To help document evidence of possible disparities in southern Louisiana districts, McCarthy, Dunn, and McGuirt used U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and district data to visually depict where meal pick-up sites were located in relation to the percentage of the neighborhood population that was Black.

Based on those maps, “It was pretty consistent across the board that sites were more conveniently located for white families,” Herbert said. She anticipated that the problem would be exacerbated by the fact that based on the most recent data, 17 percent of Black residents in Louisiana don’t have access to a car, compared to 5 percent of white residents.

“In the westernmost part of St. Mary Parish, the census block tract there is 72 to 88 percent Black. There wasn’t a single meal distribution site there,” McCarthy said.

St. John Parish, about 30 miles northwest of New Orleans, is an area known for a history of environmental racism, with Black communities bearing the brunt of toxic air pollution from chemical plants and oil refineries. The parish has the highest risk of cancer due to air pollution in the entire country.

A March 2020 map of meal sites in the parish revealed just four pickup locations, three of which were on one side of the Mississippi River. “There’s not a single bridge in that parish,” McCarthy said. “[For] all of the families on the south side of the Mississippi, there’s only that one spot.”

In neighboring St. James Parish, which covers 258 square miles, the researchers identified just four meal sites. On March 22, the school district there stopped serving meals altogether. “It’s been like we are a parish that’s been left behind,” said Rhoda Johnson, an LDF client and grandmother to children in St. James Parish schools. “They just stopped feeding the children.”

Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images

A lack of aid for families of color in the rural south

Both McCarthy of Columbia and Herbert of LDF acknowledge the challenges schools were facing to produce meals at all and keep staff safe during the pandemic. And they said that while placing meal sites without considering the needs of Black families was likely not intentional, it pointed to the deep-rooted, systemic nature of racism in the U.S.

“[Unequal access to meals] has its roots in our history of segregation in America,” Herbert said. “The whole premise behind Brown v. Board of Education was that resources follow white communities, and if Black students were ever going to be able to have the resources they deserved, white communities were going to have to share.”

That conclusion squares with what Birmingham resident Celida Soto Garcia has observed in Alabama since the start of the pandemic. Garcia lives in Birmingham and works on hunger advocacy for Alabama Arise, a nonprofit dedicated to the interests of the state’s low-income residents. Since last March, she has focused entirely on what she called “the conundrum of getting meals to families.”

Unlike in some parts of Alabama, Birmingham had a highly developed plan for getting meals to students, Garcia said. But even there, barriers for Black families existed. “We have a 74 percent Black population here, and a lot of Black students have elderly caregivers,” she said. “They don’t have cars.”

Things are much worse in rural areas like Alabama’s Black Belt, an area named for its rich agricultural soil. It is also highly populated with Black families, many of whom are descendants of enslaved people who worked on cotton plantations there. “It’s highly rural and is really disconnected from access to food, access to health care,” Garcia said. “In areas like Sumter, Perry, and Macon counties, they’re literally scrambling to come up with solutions to deliver school meals.”

Garcia said the schools are doing everything they can, but needed resources rarely reach the communities. “That leaves the question: ‘Why?’ Every time they say, ‘Well, it’s a matter of getting the federal funding down here.’ Okay, why isn’t it here? You have to dig deeper and keep asking why,” she said. Often, the answer has to do with a history of discrimination against people of color.

And that extends beyond Black families. Celsa Stallworth lives in Leeds, Alabama — where LDF sued the school district after it stopped serving meals last April — and has an 11-year-old in school there. Stallworth works for a local nonprofit that supports Hispanic immigrant families, and she said that community was also disproportionately affected by the suspension of meal service.

“During that particular time, I was delivering food and reaching out to different family members that were having problems with [getting] groceries and hot meals,” said Stallworth. “We stepped up our efforts when I was told that they won’t have access to the meals at school.”

Many immigrants she knew were out of work due to restaurant closures. And, most significantly, most aid programs in the area require documentation of citizenship to access benefits. Even when they don’t, she said, misinformation abounds and immigrant families fear asking for help. “So, the resources are extremely limited,” she said.

Big cities did prioritize feeding minority populations

In the early days of the pandemic, McCarthy, Dunn, and McGuirt worked on a larger research project that looked at how four of the country’s largest urban school districts — in Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City — implemented meal distribution programs.

That study, published in September, found that the cities did tend to prioritize placing sites in neighborhoods with more families of color. All four districts placed significantly more meal sites in high-poverty areas. All except Chicago had significantly more sites in neighborhoods with larger minority populations.

Another national analysis, also out of the Tisch Center, found the vast majority of rural school districts in the sample continued to provide meals, but the frequency, distribution model, and communication about meal service varied greatly from district to district.

That points to the fact that that districts need more guidance when creating emergency food distribution plans, said McCarthy.

“When we did the rural case study, when we did our urban case study, when we looked at these maps . . . what it all really demonstrated was that these districts were struggling to figure out how to best serve kids at a time when need was highest,” she said. “They really didn’t have any best practices or guidelines in place. There was no federal leadership telling them to consider factors like racial access, access to transportation, etc.”

Closing racial gaps on meal access

Moving forward, McCarthy hopes to see the USDA develop a school meal distribution plan for emergencies, which incorporates all of the data and learning that will come out of this time.

Over the long-term, she’d also like to see the agency start tracking meal service participation based on race. “We don’t actually know if the percentage of eligible Black students is equal to the percentage of participating Black students, simply because we don’t report school meal data by race,” she explained.

That kind of data could inform future efforts to ensure equitable meal access. For example, many advocacy organizations are currently pushing for the USDA to permanently offer universal school meals instead of requiring eligible families to apply. Data on whether or not BIPOC students across the country are receiving the meals they’re eligible for would be especially relevant to that discussion.

While federal nutrition policy is not what LDF focuses on, Herbert said data is always a good thing for lawyers looking for inequality. For now, the districts she works in are operating meal service programs for students still at home, and she is focused on monitoring those efforts to make sure they “don’t fall back through the cracks.”

She’s also monitoring whether families are able to access benefits from the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT), a program launched in March 2020 that helps low-income families buy their own food, rather than needing to rely on school meals.

Last week, President Biden directed the USDA to increase P-EBT benefits by 15 percent. In addition to recent increases in SNAP benefits authorized by Congress’ last COVID relief bill, he also directed the USDA to get emergency SNAP allotments to the lowest-income households.

As the new administration continues to tackle rising food insecurity, it’s important to remember that vulnerable children, overall, will benefit from equitable access to school meals, Herbert said.

“If these Black students aren’t getting these meals, that also means that there are Latino students who aren’t getting meals,” she said. “There are maybe white children from less affluent areas who aren’t getting meals. We’re always going to unapologetically fight for Black communities. [And] when we do, we really support all communities.”

• The Pandemic Reveals Racial Gaps in School Meal Access [Civil Eats]

The farmers rode tractors into New Delhi, demanding the repeal of new farm laws.

The order reverses Trump’s effort to speed up line speeds at chicken packing plants

From a CBD-infused take on Sonic to a pop-up bakery offering dalgona coffee pie to drive-thru chili-topped spaghetti, here’s where to eat in the Queen City

The Queen City of the West was in the midst of a dining boom before the coronavirus pandemic hit. The city’s Germanic roots were holding steady in European-inspired kitchens, and its eponymous cinnamon-spiced chili was still being ladled over spaghetti and smothered in shredded cheddar. But another side to the city’s food scene was thriving like never before, in bowls of Korean bibimbap, creative plates like those from chef Ryan Santos at Please, and, at a single intersection in Over-the-Rhine, in arepas and cachapas, fresh Hawaiian poke, and primo American smoked meats served au jus. Bringing it all together was — and is — the city’s relatively new streetcar, which connects dining hubs in the Banks district and Over-the-Rhine.

The COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on some of that buzz, not to mention its rapid growth, but Cincinnati is neither down nor out. Upscale steakhouses no longer scoff at their cuisine being consumed off-site; chefs known for pate en croute now offer finish-at-home lasagna; alleyways and entire streets have been transformed into outdoor “streeteries” complete with propane heaters or fire pits; and bars are taking advantage of a new law that allows them to sell to-go cocktails with meals.

That’s not to say the last 10 months have been easy on the industry. Restrictions mandate six feet of space between parties both indoors and outdoors, limiting capacity at many restaurants, and a statewide curfew closes bars and restaurants by 10 p.m. This initially spurred innovation, but has now forced some establishments to hibernate through the winter and others to close permanently after decades in business.

Still, many are holding on, attacking the pandemic with the city’s famed tenacity. They make up the following list of Cincinnati establishments that have pivoted, popped up, or pushed ahead to keep feeding the city, safely, amid COVID-19.

Note: Many if not most restaurants in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky have reopened their dining rooms for lunch and dinner service. Their inclusion here should not be taken as an endorsement for dining in. All of the restaurants on this list offer takeout options, and heated outdoor seating is available where indicated, though contingent on the weather. Hours and levels of service may vary. Studies indicate that there is a lower risk of exposure when dining indoors, but that is contingent on restaurants following strict social distancing and other safety guidelines. For updated information, visit the city of Cincinnati’s COVID-19 dashboard.

Andy Brownfield has covered the bar and restaurant scene in Cincinnati for seven years. His work for the Cincinnati Business Courier can be seen here.

The announcement comes on the heels of growing calls to reopen the city for indoor dining

Thanks to its weekly series of increasingly wacky beers, Martin House Brewing Company has figured out how to make it work in these complicated times

The chain’s take will be true to the traditional Detroit style, defined by a square or rectangular deep-dish shape, pan-crisped crust, and tomato sauce dolloped on top

Pizza Hut is going full Midwestern, announcing today the nationwide launch of a new Detroit-style pizza.

Available in four varieties for a limited time, the pizza is not to be confused with the brand’s existing pan pizza, which is vastly inferior to Detroit-style pizza. Pizza Hut’s take on the regional specialty will be true to the traditional style, defined by a square or rectangular deep-dish shape, porous interior, pan-crisped crust caramelized to perfection with cheese, and tomato sauce dolloped on top.

Buddy’s Pizza in Detroit is credited with inventing the pizza back in the 1940s, although by now it appears on menus from New York to Nashville to San Francisco. As CNBC writes: “The pizza has been growing in popularity in the last decade as Michiganders opened up pizzerias elsewhere in the U.S. Little Caesars, which is privately owned and headquartered in Detroit, was the first national pizza chain to take the trend to the masses in 2013.” Jet’s Pizza, another Michigan-based chain, has also taken its Detroit-style pizza to other states, while the original Buddy’s has also announced plans to expand regionally and beyond.

“Detroit-style pizza is the fastest-growing trend in pizza,” David Graves, chief brand officer of Pizza Hut U.S., told CNBC. “It’s no longer a Midwest-only thing.”

Pizza Hut spent more than a year developing its version, trying more than 500 iterations and making a new tomato sauce just for its Detroit-style pizza, according to a press release.

The chain is coming off a turnaround year of demand and sales growth, as pizza purveyors such as Domino’s and Papa John’s fared well during the pandemic amid a delivery boom.

• Detroit-Style Pizza: The Definitive Guide [E]
• Pizza Hut to launch Detroit-style pizza in bid to advance its turnaround [CNBC]

With nearly 50,000 members, Facebook group Black Girls Cook & Meal Plan is preserving soul food traditions for a new generation of home cooks

When I was a child, my mother taught me how to cook by demonstration. Most times she just wanted me to wash the dishes, but even with my back turned and my arms elbow deep in warm, soapy water, she explained everything she was doing to prepare my favorite feast, be it gumbo during the holidays, rice and gravy on a Sunday, or any of her mid-week meals, like red beans and rice or jambalaya, for which I had a special affinity.

As I got older she allowed me to help more by seasoning the food, chopping the vegetables, and telling me why she did what she did in the kitchen. But it wasn’t until I was out of the house, living in my post-undergrad apartment, that she actually gave up the recipe goods.

My family recipes aren’t written on paper. They’ve been passed down through experiential teaching methods that go back more generations than I can count. For example, when I called my mother last New Year’s Day as I was preparing to keep to tradition and make black-eyed peas, she told me, “Season it like you do red beans but add a pinch of sugar.” That informal approach helps make up the very fabric of soul food.

Soul food is not to be confused with Southern food. Though it is a part of overall Southern cuisine, the difference is in the details; specifically, the seasoning. “It’s going to have more spice, it’s going to be sweeter, more fat,” says soul food scholar and cookbook author Adrian Miller. And while finagling the techniques from my mother was simple, for those who want to learn to cook soul food, getting this information is not always so easy.

“You have to stand there and watch and practice and cook with them,” Miller says. “And other times when you finally get that person to write down the recipe, they often give you a ‘lesser-pe,’ which means they intentionally leave out something so that you can’t replicate it.” These “lesser-pes,” lack of sharing, and generations of growth and mobility within the Black community, combined with a persistent myth that soul food is unwanted slave food, has led to some shunning of the cuisine by the descendants of the people who created it. “I think in the last 20 years for whatever reason parents just didn’t teach their kids this stuff,” Miller says. “Some traditions were severed or lost or very diminished.”

But with the rise of food competition programs like Chopped and Food Network Star, and celebrity chefs such as Sunny Anderson and the late, great B. Smith, there’s a yearning to reconnect with these cooking traditions. This is evidenced by the popularity of the Facebook group Black Girls Cook & Meal Plan. With nearly 50,000 members, the group’s mission is to break the generational stigmas and stereotypes that surround Black cooking. It does this by opening up traditional soul food recipes to even those who didn’t have them passed down directly from family members, requiring each shared photo of a meal to include instructions on how to make it.

Teresa Southern, a media strategist from Macon, Georgia, and a member of the Facebook group, says her earliest memory of soul food is being in church and eating collard greens and cornbread with her fingers. Her mother tells her collard greens were the only vegetable she would eat without putting up a fight. But while Southern is a soul food aficionado now, she says that when she was younger, she wanted no part of the other common soul food staples her parents made growing up, including neckbones, pig tails, pig ears, and chitlins. Her picky childhood eating habits play into the stereotypes and stigmas that have surrounded soul food for generations.

A mark of soul food is eating from the “roota to the toota,” or whole-animal cooking. This tradition dates back to hog-killing rituals from the country’s antebellum period. African-American history courses often teach that enslaved people were given rations of tainted pork, or the unwanted parts of the pig, along with cornmeal or vegetables. From this lesson comes the persistent narrative of Black people taking the scraps from the master’s table and making them into something delicious. The main example of this is chitlins: cooked pig intestines.

However, Miller says the idea that enslaved people were forced to eat the worst parts of the pig (or any animal) and not the choice cuts of meat like ham, bacon, ribs, or steak is only partially true. Even during slavery, he says, it wasn’t just Black people who ate chitlins. “[This narrative] that we’re digesting white superiority really ignores the lineage from Western Europe and then it also ignores West Africa,” he says.

Miller, in his quest to become the definitive soul food scholar and write his first book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, read 500 cookbooks and 3,000 oral histories of formerly enslaved people. In those oral histories, he found one story of a slaveholder who beat his enslaved cook because he didn’t think she made the chitlins well enough. “Europeans were grubbing on chitlins in the 1600s and 1700s,” Miller says. “The earliest written recipe for chitlins — they were beef chitlins, not pork — is in a British cookbook from 1740.” Despite this fact, the notion that soul food consists of food that is unwanted and lesser persists.

Toni Tipton-Martin notes in her 2015 book, The Jemima Code, that cookbook authors who published during the 1970s “tried to unring that bell by embracing the confidence and cultural pride of the black power movement, embellishing and deepening it with African foods, celebrations, and practices.” According to Tipton-Martin, this new breed of chefs worked to prove that soul food was more than pork parts, greens, and cornbread. It was through their culinary artistry that soul food came to include a wider range of foods that tap into the heritage of the Black experience, in America, Africa, and across the diaspora. It was in this way that these chefs of the ’70s began to explicitly define what soul food was in taste, smell, and ingredient profile.

But a shift away from soul food also took place during the Black liberation movement, says Miller. Some people didn’t view cooking, especially the cooking that emerged from slavery, as valuable work to engage in. “Over time, African Americans throw shade on cooking because it’s like, ‘Well, we were forced to do that. We couldn’t get out of the kitchen,’” says Miller. “And that’s why I think when you get to the civil rights movement and more of the economy is opened up to African Americans, you start to see fewer and fewer cooks as part of the profession.” This dichotomy of thought, some expanding the food and flavor profile of soul food while others distanced themselves from it, led to the rift we see now, with some Black cooks and families shunning soul food as others embrace the cuisine.

In the 1970s, America also saw the rise of fast food, which helped raise a generation of African-American children away from soul food cuisine and traditions. Miller notes the decline in business at soul food restaurants in college towns over the last 20 years as evidence of the trend, while Southern felt the shift growing up. “My dad always joked that he thought I grew up off of hamburgers because whenever my mom made those [soul food] meals, she always made me a hamburger,” she says. “I mean, that was just all I ate.”

When Southern joined the Black Girls Cook & Meal Plan group, her first post was a video of her cooking a soul food staple: fried chicken. “I was so amazed at how many people do not know how to fry chicken. [They] were like, ‘Uh, oh my God, look at your fried chicken! It’s so perfect and brown in the cast-iron skillet.’ I was like, ‘People don’t know how to cook fried chicken?’ I was just aghast.” Admittedly, Southern doesn’t remember learning to fry chicken. “It was just one of those things I always stood in the kitchen [making] with my mom and my dad,” she says.

Southern’s parents granted her access to family recipes and soul food secrets, access she’s granting in the Facebook group and on her personal social media pages. Of the sharing, she says, “It just felt like a sister circle, a friends circle, a place to talk about things that we all love [about] being Black women, soul food, but [it’s] also a way to amplify what you’re already cooking.”

Her experience is similar to that of university professor Alicia Pryor, who is also in the Black Girls Cook & Meal Plan Facebook group. While she says she joined the group to see the photos of members’ plates, she has come to appreciate the mission to break the generational stigma surrounding the sharing of soul food recipes. “If you’re one of those people that’s trying to learn different things and perfect your craft of cooking,” she says, “why not be able to try new recipes things or put in ingredients that you hadn’t thought might go well together?”

It’s a lesson Pryor has learned first-hand, not only from the Facebook group, but also from her own upbringing. To this day, she enjoys her favorite soul food dishes from her childhood, including the liver and onions she learned to make from her grandmother. “My mom is not the best cook, so she would send me up with my grandma, and my grandma would be throwing down in the kitchen,” Pryor says. She also has fond memories of her maternal uncle’s grilling. “He would barbecue all this country food, like raccoon and possum, and we would tear it up.”

Cooking her grandmother’s macaroni and cheese, which was passed down to Pryor’s mother and then to Pryor, along with other food from her summers in Panama City, Florida, helps her keep the memory of her grandmother alive since her death some 20 years ago.

Pryor comes from a line of cooks on both sides of her family, but she says trying to learn the recipes of her paternal great-aunt Gussie Mae Pryor has been more difficult. Those recipes were passed on to her father. “When my dad was in his 20s, he was in the military,” she says. “This was in [Great-Aunt Gussie Mae’s] final days. My dad came home and my Aunt Gussie said, ‘Can you make this pound cake for me?’ And my dad was like, ‘Yeah, just tell me how to do it.’”

Pryor’s father made the cake, Gussie Mae enjoyed several slices, and she passed away later that night. Upon her death, Pryor’s father was given all of Gussie Mae’s recipes — recipes he has held sacred and is only now beginning to share. “My dad, up until last year, did not share with me his pound cake [or] his sweet potato pie recipes,” Pryor says. “He’s always like, ‘Well, I’ll make it and I’ll bring it.’ Last year, he decided to share those two in particular. He’s shared more with me since then, but those two were the big ones.”

Pryor is a fan of the increased transparency of the Facebook group, and it also helps her learn cooking techniques she may have never come across. Southern feels the same way, although she has benefitted from having family members who have always shared their recipes with her whenever she’s asked. “My dad was known for his amazing macaroni and cheese,” Southern says, recounting the time she called and asked for the recipe. “I could just see him in his La-Z-Boy, leaning back, running off the ingredients. ‘Okay, you got a can of condensed milk, grate your cheese, don’t go and buy no cheese already shredded, you sit down and you grate that cheese. Add your noodles, add this, three eggs, beat ’em before you put ’em in the pan.’ I feel like I am blessed that I do have family who are open and ready to tell us how to make it.”

Pryor, Southern, and I have all learned our families’ soul food secrets by being present in the kitchen, asking questions, and then trying them on our own until we’ve perfected them. Some children have interest, and some don’t. Some people may not have interest until they’re adults, which is why groups like Black Girls Cook & Meal Plan are helpful. “I really thought about that and I was like, ‘Man that’s kind of cool,’” Pryor says of the group. “Food is for everyone to enjoy.” In this way, Black cooks and Black families have been able to reclaim their place in the kitchen, reconnect with their history, and advance a tradition that’s sustained us for centuries.

Nikesha Elise Williams is a two-time Emmy award-winning producer and the author of the novel Beyond Bourbon Street, centered around the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Marking the fourth location for the popular Michelin-starred eatery, and its first in Florida 

Detroit Shipping Company opens its books to show the highs and lows of operating during the pandemic

Annoyingly techie but excruciatingly precise, “pivoting” is now a loaded term in the restaurant world. The pandemic has demanded adaptation; since March 2020, restaurants and bars across the country have navigated through the COVID-19 pandemic by transforming into online groceries, outdoor dining destinations, meal-kit providers, and more. These pivots require time, resources, creativity, innovation, and, of course, money — and their success can mean a restaurant’s survival. In this series, Eater asks operators to open their books and explain how pivoting has (and hasn’t) worked, by the numbers. First up: Detroit Shipping Company.

March is usually a whirlwind time for Detroit restaurants. Diners come out of the hibernation that Midwest winters demand and revel in a slew of holidays and sporting events, including St. Patrick’s Day, Detroit Tigers Opening Day, March Madness, and the Marche du Nain Rouge, an annual parade and celebration held in Cass Corridor. For Detroit Shipping Company, a two-and-a-half-year-old food hall near the Marche du Nain Rouge parade route, March 2020 was shaping up to be a great month. “We placed a huge order getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day and Nain Rouge, and we had mountains and mountains of Jameson and Irish whiskey,” general manager Matthew Zacklan recalls. But by the time the booze was delivered, the state confirmed its first two COVID-19 cases. Within six days, the state’s food industry was at a nearly complete standstill.

Trying to ensure the safety of customers and staff and the viability of the restaurant stalls that operate inside Detroit Shipping Company’s walls has been, to put it mildly, challenging. In a regular year, the food hall would be thriving off a steady number of customers coming in for entertainment, drinks, art displays, and international food from six independently owned restaurants. At full volume, it might hold 600 people.

“We are considered a food gathering spot and community space where people come together, order, and then sit with some people that may or may not be in their own party — they basically sit with random strangers,” says Zacklan. All that, however, has been put on hold because of COVID-19, throwing its model into question. In 2019, Detroit Shipping Company served 88,210 customers. In 2020, it served less than a quarter of that volume. It closed its doors on March 16, 2020 with the expectation of reopening sometime in early April; on its last day of service, the food hall made a grand total of $734. Since then, the food hall has undergone several iterations, reopening for curbside carryout on May 20, and for dine-in service at half capacity on June 12. With the exception of a brief closure in July to reevaluate its reopening plans, Detroit Shipping Company has kept the doors open in some form ever since.

Sales changes

Detroit Shipping Company, by design, is a destination for private parties and a gathering place for large groups. The 12,000-square-foot food hall is within walking distance of some of the city’s biggest concert venues and arenas. The variety of food and the space, complete with stages for musicians, makes it a good, people-pleasing spot for hosting casual events. But with the pandemic, large gatherings were one of the first things to cease in Michigan. Weddings, bachelorette parties, and baby showers were canceled at a moment’s notice and counties began issuing new capacity limits. Detroit Shipping Company tells Eater that it canceled roughly 145 private events, including one wedding, as well as six public events and countless regular calendar events like open mic nights and comedy shows.

Staffing

Between 25 and 30 employees were laid off in March, including most of Detroit Shipping’s events staff. Detroit Shipping Company, like many establishments, organized a staff fundraiser, but received only $1,915 toward its $50,000 goal, while some individual restaurants within the food hall, like Bangkok 96 Street Food, received nearly $2,000 in donations to benefit workers.

In order to comply with new rules that came down in the summer limiting the movement of customers as well as mandating masks and social-distancing requirements, the food hall restructured front-of-house operations. Instead of customers walking up to order at individual stalls, Detroit Shipping Company had to offer table service, with a host at the door who enforced masks and seated guests and food runners delivering customer orders to tables. Detroit Shipping incurred additional labor costs to hire those workers, as well as from hiring staff to help keep up with rigorous sanitation protocols. “It definitely added up,” Zacklan says.

Relief

In the spring, the team applied for the Paycheck Protection Program through the CARES Act, securing $100,700 — all of which management ended up using to pay staff and modify service — and an additional $149,900 Economic Injury Disaster Loan. “That helped us tremendously,” Zacklan says. The food hall also secured grants through a local company, Midtown Detroit Inc., to help with things like rent relief for tenants, totaling $26,016 — enough to forgive two months of rent for each business within Detroit Shipping Company. The food hall also participated in a state spirits “buyback” program that offered money in exchange for liquor purchased prior to the March 16 shutdown. This allowed Detroit Shipping Company, which operates all the bars within the food hall, to offload the booze it had purchased for events like St. Patrick’s Day that never happened.

New costs

While many restaurants were bringing in little to no revenue at the beginning of the pandemic, some were still compelled to make costly purchases to improve their online presence and takeout services. The restaurants within Detroit Shipping Company transitioned from independent point-of-sale systems (the programs and equipment through which businesses take orders and payments) to a single online ordering system, costing Detroit Shipping Company well over $10,000. (The unified point-of-sale system, notably, didn’t last. Shipping Company partner Jonathan Hartzell says that they’ve returned to individual systems due to the complicated nature of splitting up sales for each business.) The company incurred new costs from cleaning supplies and PPE, included as part of its management responsibilities.

COVID-19 pivot-related construction projects were another cost to contend with. During the spring, management spent an initial $35,000 constructing a patio in the property’s surrounding parking lot to supplement seats in the building’s central courtyard. They added wood fencing to insulate the space, as well as a volleyball court to make the outside of the building feel more fun and inviting. They erected tents and designed new wood booths to improve the feel of the outdoor area. For Hartzell and his business partner, James Therkalsen, creating the outdoor space was actually a positive outcome in a very challenging situation. “It’s been our dream and plan that the area around us builds up, and to eliminate the parking lot in the back and make that into the backyard,” he says, referring to the vacant space surrounding Detroit Shipping Company’s two-story building.

Hartzell says that from the outside, it looked as if Detroit Shipping Company was doing well during the summer. “During the height of the late summer, when people felt comfortable being out, we would have an hour wait, and it looked like we were jamming,” he says. “But you’ll see year on year, we were still at 40 percent of what we were doing [during the same period in 2019].” The smaller capacity limited the food hall’s ability to serve as many people per day, and the groups coming in were smaller, too, in accordance with safety recommendations. Changes to state laws allowing for to-go cocktails did little to help.

And winterizing was a huge, largely unrecognized cost incurred by restaurants in cold climates this fall. Detroit Shipping Company’s management estimates they spent $30,000 on top of the $35,000 to build the original outdoor seating area. Less than a week after the new tents were built, Michigan closed down indoor dining areas and placed some unanticipated restrictions on outdoor seating. Among the rules: Outdoor structures were required to have no more than one wall if they seated multiple groups, meaning tents like those at Detroit Shipping couldn’t be enclosed or insulated with any sort of wall. They also had to be a certain distance from standing walls, meaning that Detroit Shipping Company had to move one of its tents from inside the building’s courtyard seating area further away from its building to comply, at a cost of $3,800. “That’s one misstep on our part that we couldn’t foresee,” says Hartzell.

Looking forward

Right now, Michigan restaurants are gazing into an extremely difficult winter. Indoor dining is currently closed through Sunday, January 31, with the possibility that the state may allow some forms of indoor service to resume on Monday, February 1, if hospital capacity, overall case rates, and the percent positivity rate continue to improve. Businesses like Detroit Shipping Company, which has received numerous grants and loans throughout this process, may be able to make it through. But others may not.

Even with that relief, however, winter has its own set of challenges, and the promise of March — its events, its improved weather, its potential for progress on vaccinations — is still a ways away. “Unfortunately, we had to lay some people off and make some changes internally to operate for the winter. We’re pretty much doing everything we can to make it this winter,” Zacklan says. “Hopefully in spring, we’ll see some will be in better days.”

Infographics by Brittany Holloway-Brown, icons by Made by Made.

Lighting candles turns the morning meal into a calming ritual

This post originally appeared in the January 25, 2021 edition of The Move, a place for Eater’s editors to reveal their recommendations and pro dining tips — sometimes thoughtful, sometimes weird, but always someone’s go-to move. Subscribe now.

Even in a normal year, the stretch of the calendar between January and March can seem bleak, with few holidays or sunny days to punctuate the dreary, gray cold. People have developed plenty of psychological crutches to survive a harsh winter: blankets, tea, and other related bits of hygge; a “joy toolbox” of essential comforts; a “wintertime ambassador” to play devil’s advocate and remind you to go outside in subfreezing temperatures. Even as 2021 brings some distant sense of hope, and perhaps even promises reason to celebrate by spring or summer, in the meantime, these coping mechanisms are more critical than ever.

The seasonal doldrums hit me hardest in the mornings. I regularly wake up at 6 a.m. (shout out to my fellow morning people). In New York in January, that means rising to a dark sky, which feels particularly absurd these days since there’s not much to do at that hour. I don’t need to catch a train to the office, or go to the gym, or switch out of sweatpants. The whole world seems to start a little later. That’s how I discovered that lighting a few candles at breakfast is a quick hack that imparts a little seasonal positivity.

No one bats an eyelash at a candlelit dinner, yet adding a bit of fire to any other meal seems oddly medieval. Most modern folks don’t reach for candles unless it’s a romantic occasion or the power’s gone out. But candles are a necessary weapon in the battle against winter’s dark, depressing mornings. Many winter holidays focus on fire, from Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in the U.S. to winter solstice festivities like Stonehaven Fireballs and Yalda Night. The glow of the flame not only lights up the night, but brightens spirits too.

Sometime in the fall, my partner and I became the proud owners of a massive box of extra-tall Ikea candles (that is to say, someone offloaded them onto us). We deployed them every night at dinner, burning through them with reckless abandon, trying not to get too precious about it. Some nights we would leave the table set after dinner, carrying over the tablecloth and placemats to the next morning, and the candles naturally followed.

Now we light candles every morning, part of a larger effort to avoid looking at bright devices or harsh artificial light first thing in the day. Breakfast is classically characterized as a chore, essential nutrition that shouldn’t be skipped lest you risk condemnation by four out of five doctors. Before breakfast candles, I enjoyed the most important meal of the day casually. But since breakfast candles, the experience has been transformed into a deeply adored formal ritual. The mellow flicker allows my eyes to slowly acclimate to the day, providing time for my brain to turn on before plunging into email or the news. And even if we don’t fully subscribe to making a fussy breakfast during quarantine, candles make a bowl of oatmeal or some toast feel significant. Their romantic air entices me to linger, to quietly enjoy the extra time saved on commuting during this work-from-home era.

The habit is one I’m planning to keep after COVID. When the pandemic is over, there will be more winters and more dark mornings to enjoy. I’m already ordering another bulk pack of candles.

The Bucktown restaurant from disgraced chef Jacob Bickelhaupt, convicted of battery against his ex-wife, opened in 2019

After nearly two months, the regional lockdown that restricted restaurants to takeout service only has ended, with caveats

And no one at Eater knows how to react

In 2019, Eater Young Gun Christina Nguyen (’14) of Hai Hai in Minneapolis espoused on the glory of Everything But the Bagel seasoning from Trader Joe’s, a combination of sesame seeds, garlic, onion, salt, and poppy seeds that becomes a delicious impetus to floss. “I think that any opportunity to make anything into an everything bagel is always good,” she said, and listed everything she’s put it on so far — hummus, avocado, roasted vegetables, pita. By the time she praised it, Everything Bagel “spice” was a bonafide trend, lacing pastries, pizza, and wings at restaurants around the country, and plenty of other things in the privacy of homes.

It’s probably not surprising then that Jeni’s Ice Cream is rolling out an Everything Bagel flavor. It’s not even the first ice cream company to do so — Pretty Cool Ice Cream in Chicago released one in a collab with Steingold’s Deli, as did Ice & Vice and Kossar’s Bialy’s in New York. But Jeni’s is a household name now, and their Everything pint, which is “Buttery streusel laden with sesame, poppy seeds — and yes, onions and garlic — woven throughout subtly sweet cream cheese ice cream,” will be available to ship around the country.

While Jeni’s has a history of “weird” flavors, combining dried garlic and ice cream threw Eater staffers for a loop. Some of us immediately hated it. Some of us, desperate for a new feeling after months in relative isolation, were ready. Below, a smattering of reactions on whether we would or wouldn’t:

I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. Cream cheese ice cream is good, and even garlic ice cream has been known to be good, so if they use a cream cheese ice cream base and tame the garlic enough to bring bring out its sweetness, then it could possibly work? — Rebecca Marx, senior editor

It’s exhausting to even think about whether or not this would taste good. Look, I love everything bagels, and everything bagel seasoning, but this is an objectively terrible development. Not every trendy ingredient needs to be iterated into every possible product and sold to us as a fun quirky new way of enjoying it. — Hillary Dixler Canavan, restaurant editor

I do think that I would generally get down with the premise, but I just don’t think I could ever reconcile the salt-garlic combo with the sweetness of an ice cream. Basically, I don’t hate it on principle, but I do have some major doubts. — Brooke Jackson-Glidden, editor, Eater Portland

I have enjoyed everything donuts and see this as a natural extension of that combo. Would try. — Nicholas Mancall-Bitel, editorial associate

Execution is key — a good version balances creaminess with the “spice” texture and isn’t too sweet. I’ve enjoyed Pretty Cool’s rendition, but a blended pint like Jeni’s is more daunting than an ice cream bar. — Naomi Waxman, Reporter, Eater Chicago

I think it’s fine and I would like to try it. — Jenny Zhang, staff writer

I think it’s important to note Jeni’s appears to be conflating everything spice with everything bagels; [they’re] employing the former but calling it the latter. Common sense tells me they probably aren’t the first people to make this error but they compound it by committing to the cheese but not the bread, the presence of buttery streusel notwithstanding. Assuming one wouldn’t eat a pile of cream cheese with everything spices out of a bowl, why would they omit the bread here? I’m not trying to be facetious; I think this is an important point: an everything bagel is a product of spices interacting with toasty and slightly malty bread. If you took rock salt and put it ice cream you wouldn’t call it salt bagel ice cream, would you? I feel like this is yet again a company failing to contextualize a delicious regional foodstuff in this wanton act of bagel erasure. Okay, maybe I’m being a bit facetious. But my argumentation isn’t wrong. — Ryan Sutton, chief food critic, Eater NY

I do not know whether this is Good or Bad but I do know that I will be trying to recreate this tonight with the jar of Everything Crunch from Baz Bagels that is currently sitting in my pantry. — Erika Adams, reporter, Eater NY

Everything bagel spice is the pumpkin spice of 2021 and if that makes you happy, I’m happy for you, I guess. — Meghan McCarron, special correspondent

I was typing out something scornful but then I thought about it and... I actually think maybe this would be delicious?? idk anymore!!! I’m upset with myself. — Elazar Sontag, staff writer

I would rather be thrown into a lake than eat too-soft ice cream with frozen shards of burnt garlic and salt — Amy McCarthy, editor, Eater Dallas/Eater Houston

So there you have it! Fuck if we know! But perhaps now we can stop putting everything bagel seasoning on, literally, everything. (Okay, Ben & Jerry’s will probably do this in a year, but then we can be done, right?)

Not everyone is convinced it’s a great idea

Where will you buy a last minute Mother’s Day gift now?

Godiva is riding its company horse out of North America and shutting down or selling all 128 of its brick-and-mortar locations in the U.S. and Canada by the end of March, the chocolatier announced on Sunday. The company’s stores in the Middle East, Europe, and China will remain open, but that’s of little use to America’s last-minute gift-givers who previously could’ve counted on swinging by the mall post-work and treating their loved ones to a gilded box of truffles.

In a statement, Godiva cited the drop in traffic during the pandemic and changing consumer buying behavior as reasons behind the decision, per Business Insider. While people are no longer shopping in person at Godiva stores, the company has seen growth in online sales and purchases through its retail and grocery partners.

In 2019, the chocolate maker opened its first-ever U.S. cafe in New York, selling its signature confectionery alongside drinks and food like sandwiches, salads, and something called the “croiffle,” a.k.a. a croissant press into a hot waffle (classic 2019). At the time, Godiva had plans to open 2,000 cafes over the next six years.

Beyond the devastating loss of the croiffle in North America, Godiva’s store shutdowns will also impact an undisclosed number of employees.

“Of course, this decision was difficult because of the care we have for our dedicated and hard-working chocolatiers who will be impacted,” CEO Nurtac Afridi said in a statement. “We have always been focused on what our consumers need and how they want to experience our brand, which is why we have made this decision.”

• Godiva is closing or selling all of its stores in the United States [CNN]
• Godiva will shutter all its shops in the United States and Canada by March as it struggles with a drop in sales [Business Insider]