Late final summer season, I instructed y’all in regards to the Heinz Black Kitchen Initiative, which goals to supply assist to Black entrepreneurs seeking to develop within the restaurant business. Properly, a minimum of one native enterprise was paying consideration.
The good information is that Bag Woman’s Fry Joint at 1402 Buchanan St. is the recipient of a $20,000 grant from the initiative, supposed to assist co-founders Brandon and James Littleton be part of Heinz’s efforts to protect and rejoice Black culinary traditions. Even supposing COVID threw an enormous wrench of their plans to develop from a meals truck operation to a freestanding restaurant, Fry Woman’s Bag Joint persevered, opening their very own brick-and-mortar to serve excellent loaded fries alongside burgers, rooster tenders and wings, wraps and modern funnel cake fries to their legions of followers.
Bag Woman’s Brandon and James Middleton
The Littletons are joined by three different Tennessee recipients of Heinz’s largesse. In Memphis, Miss Crumpy’s down-home catering service was acknowledged together with the long-lasting Payne’s Bar-B-Que, a family-run pit that has served among the finest smoked meats within the metropolis out of a small cinderblock constructing on Lamar Avenue for greater than half a century.
The fourth Tennessee grantee is a Chattanoogan I’ve written about earlier than right here on Bites. Kenyatta Ashford operates Impartial Floor, a contemporary New Orleans-Fashion po’boy and yakamein restaurant that I’m obsessive about, however that has struggled to discover a everlasting residence within the ’Noog. Hopefully, this infusion of money will assist out with these efforts.
The Heinz Black Kitchen Initiative is a collaboration between Heinz, The LEE Initiative and Southern Eating places for Racial Justice (SRRJ). Congratulations to all of the recipients!
