Eddie’s Cafe and a bowl of grits
Ode to the comfort of a diner as a city loses diversity
Grits. For me, pure comfort food. I don’t remember the first time I had them, but if asked what my final meal would be, grits with butter, salt and pepper would on the menu.
I was born and raised in San Francisco, my dad a Jewish, second-generation San Franciscan and public-school teacher; my mother a black Southerner who came to the Bay Area with her family in search of a better life.
My love of grits came from my mother, and when she and my father divorced in the early ’60s, my father became a single parent to a mixed-race daughter who loved grits. As a single parent, my father both relished and relied on community. Not long out of college, my dad’s circle was an eclectic mix of races and backgrounds, including Moody, the black cook at my dad’s fraternity who introduced my parents. He taught my dad a few things about good cooking. And a bit about hard drinking — but that’s another story ...
Our house was lively and often reminiscent of a busy restaurant: lots of laughter, good food and folks staying way past closing time. My dad was (and still is) a great cook, and one of the ways he made sure his mixed-race daughter would know her heritage was through food.
Much like the first time I had grits, I don’t have a specific memory of the first time my dad and I ate at Eddie’s Cafe.
Eddie’s Cafe is a greasy spoon on the corner of Divis and Fulton owned by a Chinese family in what was at the time a primarily black neighborhood. It was something that wasn’t hard to find in San Francisco when I was growing up — a workingclass restaurant filled with more brown folks then white. Eddie’s felt like home. Did I mention Eddie’s served grits?
As I grew up and began to think about race, class, economics and the intersections of these, I marveled at the continued existence of a place like Eddie’s Cafe. The cooks were Chinese and black (maybe that explains the grits), the waiters were Filipino, the diners were working class and mostly brown. Eddie’s also had an easy, unforced feel to it. An organic community, not overthought or intentional.
By the time I moved to Oakland in the mid-’90s, the city was changing already: tech money, fewer and fewer black people, an overall whitening of San Francisco. Around Eddie’s Cafe, the neighborhood reflected what was happening citywide — a redefinition of working class, and mass economic deportation of black people.
Eddie’s Cafe still exists. It’s still owned by a Chinese family. They still serve grits, and you can still find some workingclass folks sprinkled in between the well-paid “working class.” But there aren’t many brown folks in the restaurant or the neighbored anymore. And I don’t feel quite as at home at Eddie’s Cafe — or San Francisco — as I used to.
And sometimes, when I think about how much the city has changed and how few black, brown and working-class folks are left, I find comfort in a big bowl of grits with butter, salt and pepper.
My love of grits came from my mother, and when she and my father divorced in the early ’60s, my father became a single parent to a mixed-race daughter who loved grits.