Black-owned restaurants step up

Pandemic shutdown has exposed inequity around food industry

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 June 8, 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic laid bare the reality that food — a seemingly innocuous, feelgood subject in mainstream media — is rife with inequality: access to it; the divide between those who order it versus those who farm, cook, and deliver it; the gulf between who receives coverage and whose voices are heard in the largely white mainstream media.

The shutdown disproportionately affected people of color working in restaurants and the hospitality industry. Then, as grief over George Floyd’s death and police brutality erupted in Black Lives Matter protests and civil unrest, we witnessed a stark reality when a food-delivery courier was arrested in Manhattan after the city’s 8 p.m. curfew. If we already questioned whether ordering takeout in a pandemic helped restaurants or put staff in harm’s way, we face a new dilemma: Who risks arrest while delivering your food?

Last week, as social media filled with profile photos replaced by black squares in solidarity with BLM and many crowdsourcing lists of Blackowned businesses, I went to books on Black cuisine, because America’s food story is both legacy and identity, as clearly shown in Toni Tipton Martin’s masterful tome, “The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks.” As the website Ghetto Gastro grocery reminded us, “food is a weapon,” adding, “Never forget that farming practices and the culinary innovations of enslaved Africans … are the foundation of American cuisine.”

On the West Coast, Rahanna Bisseret Martinez, a 16-year-old chef and 2018 finalist on “Top Chef Junior,” called out the Los Angeles Times’ food section for failing to “celebrate the Black lives that have created the L.A. food community” and elicited a dialogue about the need for more Black food writers online and in print. I combed back through my own work, looking at the people and places I’ve written about upstate — and those I have not. There were my reviews of Allie B’s Cozy Kitchen, Irie Vybez, Hot Spot Jamaican, D & M Jerk Center and Trinbago, among the many community eateries I’ve explored in recent years. And with those, I was reminded of my online critics who DM me to stop writing about backstories of immigrant restaurateurs and stick to food.