Many don’t take tip, but black-owned eatery lists are gold

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A good restaurant tip is gold in this town. New Orleans people covet them, cultivate them, exchange them.

But when it comes to one particularly rich vein of restaurant intel, the response by some tells me they aren’t thinking with their bellies, or that maybe the trouble is in their hearts.

These are lists of black-owned restaurants that regularly circulate on social media.

Different people make them, post them, copy them and repost them (this one, an interactive map, is particularly good). They’re popular and useful.

And the response they invoke from some online commenters is depressingly predictable.

There are people who don’t like seeing black-owned restaurants singled out for recognition or support. The ensuing commentary, if we can call it that, registers in tones of scorn and racism.

Last summer around Essence Fest, this issue came up once again on the Where Nola Eats Facebook group, which the Times Picayune ’ The New Orleans Advocate runs. The result was so fractious that group member Jalence Isles decided to start her own separate group, dubbed Where Black NOLA Eats, a forum to discuss black-owned restaurants exclusively. She’s built it up to some 21,000 members in less than a year.

Now black-owned restaurant lists are circulating anew, part of the effort to marshal community support amid the protests of police brutality and the treatment of African Americans.

Again, disdain creeps after them in comment streams, but it’s been impressive to see the response from others, eager to support.

“A whole new world for me to explore!” wrote Where NOLA Eats group member Jennifer Vu.

“Before people get offended, think of this list as an invitation to get to know us/our food/our culture,” wrote another group member, Sherelle Whitmore Sanders. “We can’t change everyone but we can change ourselves and that can start with a conversation. Conversations over a good meal are the best kind.”

I am here for that.

The best restaurant experiences go beyond the menu and connect you to a sense of community. It’s in the history that flows into the food traditions, the ingenuity the next generation brings, the fellowship of people who convene in these social places.

Black-owned restaurants deserve recognition not just as great restaurants but specifically as restaurants informed by the African-American experience. It does not diminish the notion of equality to acknowledge that and to celebrate it.

One of the grievances accompanying these social media lists is that the professional media hasn’t done enough to cover black restaurants. I agree, and in my own role covering New Orleans restaurants and food culture I’ve been trying to do a better job.

The effort has been vastly rewarding as a food lover, never mind a food writer. Let’s recognize a few examples here.

I’m thinking about the crawfish stuffed beignets that Dauna Lawrence makes at Stuph’D in Gentilly, still the best savory beignets I’ve had; that jerk fish sandwich with a garden of grilled vegetables that Phil Hare serves at Beaucoup Eats on Canal Street; the eye-popping seafood platters Charles “PeeWee” Armstrong creates at PeeWee Crabcakes to Go in Central City; the tasso cream over rotisserie chicken Louis Brown III and Sam Faciane cook up at Southern Charm in Gretna; Tia Moore-Henry’s fried stuffed peppers at Café Dauphine in Holy Cross; the gravy-smothered pork steak Garrad Landry serves at his family’s Smiley’s Grill in New Orleans East; the spicy-tang of wuzzam sauce that’s helped Greg Tillery build We Dats from a food truck to a circuit of wing shops.

It doesn’t matter what type of food they make. Black-owned restaurants comprise a community and that deserves more recognition.