Eating Soul Food in Chicago

As I walked downstairs Sunday morning, the husband was furiously watching TV and typing notes into his phone. Now, those who know my husband personally (or who’ve seen any of my tweets about him) know that the fella is not prone to multitasking, especially while seated before the television: one thing at a time, folks, one thing at a time. But here he was simultaneously watching an episode of Chicago’s Best and giving his texting fingers a hefty workout. “What was he typing,” you ask? “Was it information about the Hancock Building? The Bean in Millennium Park? The mafia?” Not exactly. He was noting names of restaurants in the Chicago area that specialize in comfort food. Peering over his shoulder, I could see that his list included Flying Saucer, The Depot Diner, and MacArthur’s.

It was Chicago’s Best‘s spot on MacArthur’s restaurant that made the husband take note, literally. More specifically, it was images of catfish: glimmering, golden, southern-fried filets. You see, anytime the man eyeballs “real catfish” north of the Mason Dixon — i.e., cornbread batter, flour, salt, red pepper (NO COD BATTER!) — he’s there. So unsurprisingly, within thirty minutes we were there, waiting in line at MacArthur’s, ordering fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, green beans, cornbread, and banana pudding.

As we took our seats in a corner booth and began to dig in (OMG, the food is good, soooo good), we realized we were the only two white folks in the relatively large and densely packed place. The serving staff, cashiers, busboys, and patrons were all black. So as I shoved forkfuls of mac and cheese into my mouth, my mind wandered. First, I was curious if similar experiences were documented on the hilariously on-the-mark blog Stuff White People Like. They are kinda in the post “Being the Only White Person Around.”

Second, I thought back to an assignment from Sociology 101, a course I took nearly 20 years ago. The task: put yourself into a situation you normally wouldn’t be in. A couple of examples for the white students in the class: attend an all-black church or ride the city bus (virtually no white folks rely on public transportation in this small southern town). Via this assignment, we were supposed to be learning about social mores and how quickly they can be disrupted. For the life of me, I cannot recall what I chose to do for this assignment, but I know I didn’t ride the city bus or temporarily swap my all-white church for an all-black one. The homework prompt did, however, apparently stay with me.

Third, while looking around MacArthur’s and realizing my whiteness, I contemplated the term soul food and wondered why it’s aligned primarily with African Americans; after all, the (white) Mississippi-born husband and I grew up eating most of the same dishes. I speculated that the association originated from plantation times, but I didn’t have a solid answer. So when we returned home, I researched. Here’s what I found.

Even though it wasn’t labeled such until the 1960s, much of what our culture now considers soul food — e.g., fried chicken, biscuits, gravy, pork chops, chitlins, grits, turnip greens, lard — derives from American slavery (and before). According to various sources, chief among them Frederick Douglass Opie’s exhaustive history Hogs and Hominy, American slaves received their owners’ leftovers for nutrition, the parts of livestock deemed un-edible for white folks, e.g., pig’s feet, oxtail, chitlins (pig intestines). As a result, the farmhands had to make do with what they were given (for the record, gumbo and jambalaya, a hodgepodge of whatever is on hand, were invented similarly). What about food like collard greens, okra, turnip greens, yams, and black-eyed peas? These apparently came into play because slaves grew weary of their daily diet of pork and corn(bread). Wanting more options, they began to grow their own vegetables/weeds, which they’d ultimately cook for themselves and their owners.

It makes sense, then, that “soul food” is linked primarily to African Americans. But why do white folks like the husband and me grow up eating the same? Just because we live(d) in the South, where many descendents of slaves still abide and deep-frying anything reigns supreme? According to Joseph Holloway’s “African Crops and Slave Cuisine,” slaves began to merge African and European culinary cultures when they introduced their native African cooking in “the Big House” (i.e., slaves were brought inside to cook for the white families). In fact, blacks may have introduced to white people the art (?) of deep fat frying, a technique common in Africa as a means of preserving chicken and beef. Further, Holloway speculates that roasting pigs, beef, chickens, and lambs on an open spit with a pan of sauce on the side for dipping meat — both African customs, mind you — may have been the origins of southern barbecue.

Geez, white Americans will poach anything, won’t they? Land, jazz, British TV shows, yoga, Italian film techniques, movie stars, and apparently African cuisine. However, we did not and cannot procure the term soul food, itself representative of “the ingenuity and skill of black cooks able to form a distinctive cuisine despite limited means.”

Addendum: After reading this post, my colleague Kristen Warner sent me the following “Soul Food” video from Comedy Central’s sketch show Key & Peele “to complicate my piece further.” Great. That’s what I need, Kristen: complications! According to Kristen, the sketch suggests that “at some point, black folks don’t even know what authenticity means — and that it all becomes a competition.” Feel free to discuss below…

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