How some Southern chefs are lifting their voices for social change

During the pandemic, chef Edward Lee helped feed people in nearly 20 cities, including Atlanta, Seattle, Nashville, Houston, New Orleans, Brooklyn, Raleigh, Los Angeles, and his hometown Louisville, Kentucky where he runs the restaurants 610 Magnolia and Whiskey Dry. His LEE Initiative has used money from donors like Audi and Maker's Mark and support from chefs across the country to turn idle restaurants into relief kitchens. The restaurant's staff got paid, and hungry people ate.

"The basis of activism is right there in the word, it's to be active," Lee said. "You have to actively participate, not just write a check, not just cook a dinner at a gala."

Restaurants have always been generous, supporting charities and other causes with donations. The pandemic, and the wave of social justice protests last year, caused more chefs and hospitality workers across the South to take direct actions and organize for social change. They are feeding people. They are raising money for Black-owned businesses. And they are speaking out against injustice with an openness that in the past they avoided.

"For me, the idea of just operating a restaurant is not good enough," Lee said.

Restaurants as first responders

Lee and Lindsey Ofcacek founded the LEE Initiative in 2017. Initially, it focused on developing the talents of Kentucky women in the culinary field. When the pandemic hit last March, however, they shifted to immediate needs. On March 17, they turned 610 Magnolia into a relief kitchen. They served about 400 people that first day. To date, their Restaurant Workers Relief Program has delivered more than 1 million meals to restaurant employees, the elderly, first responders and workers in the music industry. This month, they awarded grants to restaurants in Austin and Houston to help Texans suffering from the recent cold wave and widespread power outages.

"Chefs were told to close their restaurants, go home, sit and do nothing," Lee said. "That was an incredible missed opportunity, when you have an army of skilled people who could turn a little bit of food into meals for an entire community."

Lee believes that chefs should be considered first responders in times of crisis. He is not alone. José Andrés, the D.C.-based chef, is the most prominent example, feeding people in the United States and around the world through his organization World Central Kitchen.

Lee and Ofcacek are now steering the LEE Initiative back to its original mission. They are expanding The Women Culinary & Spirits Program nationwide. They have turned Milkwood, one of Lee's former restaurants, into the McAtee Training and Community Kitchen Program, to provide job skills to young adults and feed the surrounding community. But they know hunger will continue, and relief kitchens will be needed.

"We do believe there will be a permanent need for relief meals in every city across America for years to come," Lee said.

Southern Restaurants for Social Justice

Race and social justice became an unavoidable conversation last summer after the death of George Floyd. Floyd died on Memorial Day after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes.  Three bakers, Cheryl Day of Savannah's Back in the Day Bakery, Sarah O'Brien of Atlanta's The Little Tart Bakeshop and writer Lisa Donovan, talked about what they could do. The result was Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice.

They organized a "bake sale" last Father's Day, enlisting restaurants and bakeries across the region, and raised more than $100,000 for Color of Change, a national racial justice organization. Now, in partnership from the LEE Initiative, Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice is raising money to directly support Black-owned food businesses in the South.

"I know firsthand being a Black woman and having a business how difficult it is to be treated fairly," Day said.

The group was inspired by Bakers Against Racism, a nationwide effort that has raised more than $2 million for social justice causes.

More: Baking is essential, fosters community, says famed pastry chef Lisa Donovan

Day has never shied away from expressing her views, but she kept those separate from the bakery, which she started in 2002 with her husband, Griffith Day.

"I've stood up for what I believe in. I don't know if that makes me political or not," Day said. "My husband and I always said we wouldn't mix business and politics, but things kind of changed this summer. We felt like the issues were human issues, not necessarily political issues to us."

Finally raising their voices

Restaurant workers and owners have often avoided open political stands, particularly when their politics might be at odds with many of their customers.

"I think it's the idea that the customer's always right," said Hannah Epstein, a veteran of New Orleans dining rooms. "Especially in the offseason, we get a lot of clientele from Mississippi and Alabama. It's not always the most like-minded folks."

Epstein joined with other New Orleans hospitality workers to found Good Trouble Network, which "defies this silence." Each month, they've been selling food to support local groups that work to support renters, reform the city's jail and remove Confederate monuments. Their motto is "Eat Well and F*** Racism." ("We're pretty happy with that one," she said.)

More: A Southern restaurant’s story reveals truth about race in America

Chef Alex George, who owns Golden, Brown and Delicious in Greenville, South Carolina, had also long avoided public statements that might upset his customers.

"You kind of want money from anywhere you can get money," he said.

That changed last summer.

"There isn't a whole lot of time in a career or a life to actually do good things," he said. "You realize quickly how silly any kind of inequality is when you're working side by side with somebody in a hot kitchen."

George made a statement supporting the Black Lives Matter movement on his restaurant’s Instagram account. He admits it was a small gesture.

"It was just recognizing that silence is as bad, if not worse," he said.

Since then, he has done more. George designated items on the Golden, Brown and Delicious menu that benefit local groups working for racial justice. When crowds can gather, he will hold a barbecue twice a month, selling half and giving the rest away to neighbors.

"I'm kind of figuring out the best way to do this," he said. "It's food, and I just really want people to not be hungry." 

The costs of speaking up

Not everyone in Greenville appreciated George's support for the Black Lives Matter movement. He heard complaints. A few customers vowed to never return.

"If you really think that way, I don't want you in my restaurant," he said.

Greenville, George said, is "still very, very conservative." The city is home to the evangelical Bob Jones University, where George, a native of Greenville, went to school.

Torre Bagalman-Solazzo lives an hour from New Orleans in Covington, Louisiana, where with husband and fellow chef, she owns the upscale Del Porto Ristorante and the upcoming Greyhound. The quiet town is far different from New Orleans— the loud, liberal Louisiana outpost on the opposite side of Lake Pontchartrain.

Bagalman-Solazzo first learned in 2016 to step gingerly around politics. A post on the restaurant's social media thanking then President Barack Obama at the end of his term led to hate mail and accusations that Bagalman-Solazzo did not support the oil industry.

Last summer, shortly after Floyd's death, in a Facebook conversation she didn't realize was public, Bagalman-Solazzo replied to a friend: "For those of you saying it's terrible that people are burning sh**...black people built this country, for free, and they have every right now to burn it to the ground."

Screen grabs were soon shared. Outrage grew online and in the real world. Bagalman-Solazzo received a stream of violent threats. Someone printed up large car magnets that said, "Boycott liberal owned Del Porto and Greyhound restaurants."

"I never backed down from my feelings. I never back down from anything I say or do," Bagalman-Solazzo said. "Everyone calls it politics, but to me it was human rights."

The months of threats were traumatic, she said. But it was not all bad. Bagalman-Solazzo met new people who stepped up to support her. She did lose customers, like a prominent local couple who after dining left a note on monogrammed stationery to say they would not return. But new, different, customers have replaced them.

"Walking into Del Porto now there's young, old, Black, white. It is so much more diverse than it ever was for the 18 years we were open."

Correction: The original version of this story gave the incorrect last name for baker Griffith Day.

News tips? Story ideas? Questions? Call reporter Todd Price at 504-421-1542 or email him at taprice@gannett.com. Sign up for The American South newsletter. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.