It's 2 a.m. on a Friday night and the House of Chicken 'n Waffles in Oakland's Jack London Square is packed. Hip-hop thumps from the speaker system as a line of rowdy club goers begins to snake out the door. Most of the crowd might be a little tipsy, but they're also hungry. They've come for some down-home soul food to soak up the alcohol.
All across Oakland, from sleepy Glenview to working-class north Oakland, there's a soul food renaissance under way. New restaurants have opened, serving food that is rooted in African American history, but with a Bay Area twist. From traditional to meat-free to cooking influenced by California cuisine, the soul food currently being served in Oakland reflects the diversity of its locale.
An inextricable part of black culture, the phrase "soul food" was coined in the 1960s during the Black Power and Black Pride movements to differentiate African American cuisine from the broad category of Southern food. As Bob Jeffries wrote in 1969 in "Soul Food Cookbook," one of the first cookbooks to use the term, "while all soul food is Southern, not all Southern food is soul."
Soul food references a way of cooking that celebrates the African American experience in the United States. From its beginnings, African American cuisine relied on making do with what was available and transforming it into sustenance as delicious and fortifying as possible. Vegetables were relatively cheap and abundant. Pork played a prominent and ubiquitous role, showing up as everything from fried or boiled chitterlings to fatback or ham hocks in a big pot of long-stewed greens.
| We're hungry for some reason after finishing "Oakland in midst of soul food renaissance," Scott Hocker's special to the San Francisco Chronicle article, and we're glad we live nearby
Also: Carrie Spencer's Associated Press (via Cincinnati Enquirer) post "Soul food makes for some fine dining"
posted in articles on August 19, 2004 1:14 AM | t (0)
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oooo chicken and waffles. I'm still not over leaving Ben's Chili Bowl back home in DC.
though at Brother in Law's on Divis in SF I heard this exchange:
"what's good here, man?"
"errything."
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