Black Restaurant Week debuts
Charity event set to highlight contributions of 20 participants
Last year Esther’s Cajun Café & Soulfood took a chance on an untried culinary event and joined in the inaugural Houston Black Restaurant Week.
The program wound up delivering about $2,000 in extra sales for the Yale Street restaurant — a welcome sum for a small, family-run business.
“It brought people to the door,” said Lonnie Dow, general manager and coowner of the restaurant that bears his mother’s name. “We’ve been here a long time. It brought awareness to the fact that black restaurants are here and black restaurant owners exist.”
This year Esther’s is happy to be back in the lineup of the second annual Houston Black Restaurant Week, which has grown to two weeks running through April 30. About 20 participating restaurants will offer special Black Restaurant Week menus and agree to donate a portion of
sales from each meal sold to benefit the Blue Triangle Community Commercial Kitchen. In addition, events highlighting black hospitality professionals are peppered throughout the run.
Warren Luckett, founder of Black Restaurant Week, said the event began last year when he saw an opportunity — and a need — to focus on the contributions of Houston’s black chefs, caterers and restaurants.
“The black culinary scene was not being highlighted even though it has such a rich history and such a large scope when you talk about the whole African diaspora,” Luckett said. “We thought it was important to showcase that diversity.”
That diversity includes restaurants in Greater Houston such as This Is It Soul Food, Cool Runnings Jamaican Bar & Grill, Holley’s Seafood Restaurant & Oyster Bar, Kitchen 713, Reggae Hut, Prospect Park Sports Bar & Kitchen, Café Abuja Nigerian Kitchen, Lucille’s, Ogun Art & Wine, Phil & Derek’s Restaurant and Jazz Lounge, Boogies Chicago Style BBQ, Cafeza, The Shake, Sunshine’s, Ray’s Real Pit BBQ Shack, Toasters, D’Marcos Pizzeria and Dolce Houston Ultra Lounge & Bistro.
Chef Shakti Baum of Etta’s Little Kitchen said she’s happy to participate in the program and even happier that it exists.
“It’s important to highlight your community, period,” said the owner of the event space at 4214 Dowling, which offers cooking classes and other community events. “Everyone knows about Lucille’s and Holley’s, and those are really great guys and incredible chefs. But I’m just a little person doing Mama’s comfort food. I feel like we’re missing a mama in town right now, and that’s who I am.”
Baum brings her cooking talents to Etta’s Brunch, held most Sundays at Bar 5015 at 5015 Almeda, a popular party where she serves dishes such as shrimp and grits, oxtail and grits, jerk chicken and crab quiche. Last year’s Black Restaurant Week, she said, helped build her business: “I gained a lot of customers. I got to meet new people and build new relationships.”
Luckett said that the Black Restaurant Week events not only put black-owned businesses in the spotlight, they help with their bottom line. Participating restaurants in the first year saw about $50,000 in increased revenue from the oneweek program, he said. This year he hopes they’ll collectively see about $75,000 in additional sales.
“We always talk about how diverse the city is, but we don’t always show it,” Luckett said. “At the end of the day, it’s about driving more traffic to support these wonderful enterprises.”