Requiem for a Recipe
(For Alice Warren, an extended note found in an e-mail folder.)
Inside its doors, Alice's Fine Foods had the same easy presence as its excellent cooking.Every city has a restaurant named for its local proprietor that offers the same sort of cooking your grandmothers fixed after church. Among the high tables and low tables of the world, theirs is always the welcome table, combining food and love in some mystic way that appeals to the gathering crowd of pilgrims from far and near who come through the door. In these quiet, bright places, food is a sacrament, a community rite. Culinary schools provide training, teach techniques, and send chefs out into the world to conduct food as a business. Under the bright lights, a subtle slight of hand reverses the values of cooking: the old essence is now a "presentation." But the Alices feed more than the body. Their inner standard satisfies more than the need to turn out ad-perfect plates, or to make a dollar by holding margins down. Love touches everything they prepare. They feed the soul.
It demeans "soul food" to think of it as some cheap, low-cost mix of pig cast-way parts (knuckles, tails, neck bones and jowls), vegetables stewed until limp, heavily seasoned with meat stock that has too much cholesterol and salt. The real heart of the soul food tradition, the one found at Pascal’s in Atlanta, Mama Dip's in Chapel Hill, Silvia’s in Harlem, or Martha's in Chicago, the Florida Avenue Grill in Washington, the Ethiopian restaurants in D.C., the Sunshine restaurant in Summerton, SC (off I-95), or Dave's late night in Charleston, depends on engaged fellowship. The people who eat there enjoy each other as much as the meal. Conversation, the sharing of the minor details of life, is as big as the heaping plates to be served.
The food is the source and center of attention, always. Each dish is a visual delight, often with a wish and secret fantasy for tasting the plate about to be served (totally different from the one you ordered, of course).
Affordably priced, these great restaurants invite guests from all corners of life into their doors. Lawyers and water meter readers, maids and magazine editors stand side by side along the buffet or sit at adjoining tables. Consequently, diners arrive from all parts of the world. Alice's had guests from Germany, England, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, often without the help of young concierges who did not understand the essential desire for affirming that humanity shares a common heart and soul that transcends achievement, wealth, and self-importance.
At Alice's everyone was important because all were important. Alice Warren cooked with fresh, local products, making field peas, okra, sweet potato, collard greens, and other seasonal dishes that you would not believe. She learned from her family and from Eddie Ladson, proprietor of the Ladson House, how to cook and what appealed to the city's tastes. Love came from her heart. Prayer sustained her, and God carried her through her rough times. What made Alice special was not just her cooking, it was that she did all things with love, and her love left a light shining so bright that it became the food of memory that feeds the broken and joyful hearts.
Before these were Perdita's, and the old Henry's, a little place on the market called "Nez's" (for Miss Inez), and the Patio Tea Room, where Mr. Philip Simmons sipped afternoon tea. We miss them all, but remember them well. Everyday, we use their receipts--Charleston for recipes--for living.
Alice faced trials. Of all types.< Hugo blew apart her building, smashing the corner windows that the regulars enjoyed. Locations cut her business.< And finally, after years in the central business district, the rent was too high.
All the time, there were those who championed Alice's, who broke down the barriers to public recognition, as she broke down the distinctions about southern cooking and the belief that it was extinct.
To be southern is to find a path to faith when the way is blocked. To be southern is to hide your heart in living. To be southern is to find a way to love often against ridiculous odds and in outrageous circumstances. To be southern is to ease the pain by sharing the joy. No one cooked better or lived more fully the truth of the code that mystifies outsiders. Alice Warren—and her cooking—were true southern originals.
