Preserving Black Owned Restaurants Amiss Brooklyn Gentrification
Written by Laya Hartman
Front of Cornbread Restaurant in Crown Heights, NYC. Photo by Laya Hartman.
Last Thursday evening, Cornbread Brooklyn was full of customers waiting for home-made, hot fried chicken in the fast casual, modern-soul food restaurant. This Crown Heights restaurant draws customers from all over Brooklyn, who want to enjoy traditional soul food in a recently gentrified area.
Lance Smith, a second time customer at Cornbread walked out with bags in hand, full of food to-go. When asked about how Cornbread compares to other restaurants in the area, Lance thought that the few soul restaurants in the area didn’t always meet his standards– but Cornbread did. “I mean it's just different, it's definitely southern style…You don't have too many soul food spots, at least, you know– hit it on the spot, but so far they've been hitting with it.”
Adenah Boyah, Co-CEO and Founder of Cornbread Brooklyn started this restaurant as a way to give back to communities. As a young child, Boyah escaped war in Africa and fled to America. But through a few generous people, her life was transformed. This is now her life mission– to keep these stories and traditions alive and re-inventing themselves.
Boyah sees Soul Food as the way to connect communities and preserve tradition. “If they [Americans] don't understand that that food was a food of struggle, that we was given nothing and we made something out of it, that our ancestors came here and they was given scraps” said Boyah. The history of Soul food, in Crown Heights, is being told to vast and diverse audiences through modern franchises like Cornbread.
On a larger scale, the modernization of soul food is pushed by chefs to redefine the boundaries of the African diaspora. Chef JJ Johnson, an author of Food of the African Diaspora, believes that you can tell many stories through food. Ever since the colonization of Africa by Europeans, white people learned cooking techniques and traditions from people of color. Johnson has experienced many white-washed versions of food representations in school and the industry which he wishes to re-define and bring to light its true inventors.
One way Johnson believes that this food can be re-defined is through expanding its possibilities. Johnson, in his food, mixes many cultures and techniques with his cooking. Johnson traveled to Ghana in 2011, which made him realize how many people want to cook this cultured food but are not given the chance. “I wanted to celebrate the food of who I was or food of who I am, the food of other people, um, and bring some light to it” said Johnson. But he was given the chance.
In his latest book, The Simple Art of Rice, Johnson uses a very common and universally known ingredient to tell many different stories. In considering the very recent independence of many African countries, the traditions of African food are just beginning to have their stories re-told. “I think people also don't believe that people will pay a price for people of color's food, and we really have to figure out how to get past that,” said Johnson.
The lack of Soul Food restaurants in not just Brooklyn (a hugely black populated area), but the United states is another reason for restaurant owners, like Boyah, to open black restaurants especially in largely black areas. But Boyah wants these restaurants to feel open and inclusive to everyone in the community, drawing in larger crowds. “Someone like you can go in there and feel very at home” Boyah said to me, a 22 year old college student.
From Cornbread Brooklyn to the greater scope of the diaspora of African food, keeping the essence of Soul food with its traditional roots, while still modernizing its qualities such as quality of food, restaurant atmosphere, and location all add to the preservation of black culture. Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn which has faced major gentrification in the past 20 plus years, needs these stories of black people and black history to remain alive in the neighborhood.
