Bronzeville at the Top of the Food Bowl

One of the jewels of this year’s Chicago Tribune Food Bowl settled in Bronzeville Sunday afternoon. The Food Bowl is one of the city’s newest food extravaganzas with the stated mission of celebrating the entirety of Chicago’s dining scene, from the ever so humble to the ever so grand.  The two-week festival features an impressive range of innovative experiences that highlight the breadth of culinary choices Chicagoans enjoy and divides events into eight categories. Sunday’s event, the Bronzeville Chef’s Revival and Homecoming at the Parkway Ballroom on King Drive was part of the Giveback series and would benefit the Edna Lewis Foundation.  Lewis achieved notoriety as a chef in 1940’s New York with her restaurant Café Nicolson and is credited with inspiring generations of African American chefs.  Her career went beyond validating traditional Southern cooking by expanding our understanding of what soul food is and what it can be.  Connecting the event to her stature heightened the afternoon’s expectations. 

Nine chefs, with two of them focused on pastries, prepared examples of what constitutes contemporary soul food in the city.  Most served dishes that rest at the core of what soul food is understood to be.  Gumbo, crispy (fried) chicken, barbeque, greens and macaroni and cheese.  Many of them celebratory standards in the Black community.

Erick Williams’ (Virtue Restaurant – Hyde Park) composition of seared summer squash, pickled bing cherries, sunflower seed butter and sprouts was beautiful, delicious and completely surprising.  Not only were the ingredients wonderfully fresh, each component played like notes of music in a lovely melody.  The tender sweetness of the sprouts was particularly memorable.  Using local honey to act as the thread that tied everything together, the squash turned out to be an ideal complement to the richness present in other entrées.

There were other standouts but none held quite the same jolt of delight as the squash.  Strangely, mixed reactions surrounded Bernard Bennett’s smoked rabbit hot links.  The choice of meat may have been a little too far afield for some but no one quibbled about the flavors which were marvelous. Bennett (Big Jones – Andersonville) achieved something of a coup with his outside the box approach.  Using a vehicle that’s slightly milder than pork and carries the faint hint of game in its palette profile upended a hallowed tradition and worked beautifully.  Pairing it with standard pork rib tips and a bi-color corn pudding made for a novel culinary tribute to culture.

Maybe the deep old school vibe DJ Ayana Contreras was throwing down helped, but the easy conviviality of the 100 plus people attending the event lent a distinct warmth to the festivities.   And it seemed to make you want to eat more.  Presenting roast turkey, collard greens and (Edna Lewis) mac and cheese, Bon Appeitit Management’s Kenneth Dixon was ready with an all-encompassing feast that resembled a little sliver of an African American holiday table. Moist and succulent, the turkey was unassailably good. Although billed as spicy and despite the presence of distinct notes of heat, the greens were anything but intimidating and thoroughly acceptable.  The beautiful texture of chef Dixon’s mac and cheese couldn’t have been more comforting; but a stronger stance on seasoning might have made them even more delicious. 

Serving gumbo in a vessel no bigger than a sherry glass may have seemed a little mean-spirited, but there was no faulting the balanced perfection of the light roux Darnell Reed (Luella’s Southern Kitchen – Lincoln Square) created to prepare it.  And the ham dripping butter Brian Jupiter (Frontier – Ina Mae’s) used on his crispy chicken added another layer of decadence to a soul food classic.

Popular and appreciated, the most welcoming bar anyone could dream for served beer, wine, sangria, margarita’s and Uncle Nearest Tennessee whiskey with an easy hospitality that seemed to bring a little New Orleans charm to the Windy City.

Maya Camille-Broussard (Justice of the Pies) and Brown Sugar Bakery’s Stephanie Hart lay in wait in the ballroom’s hidden treasure of a courtyard with fairy tale pretty desserts in a perfectly idyllic setting. The velvet smoothness of Camille-Broussard strawberry-basil key lime pie was nearly as beguiling as its light peekaboo flavors.  Hart enlisted her own version of sublime textures in the batter used for her pineapple-coconut and praline cupcakes.

As an introduction to what adventures and discoveries this year’s Food Bowl might hold, you’d be hard pressed to top this venture honoring the contributions of Ms. Lewis.  Her youngest sister, Ruth Lewis Smith, was on hand to thank everyone for attending, applaud her sister and provide living proof how fiercely 95 years of age can be rocked.

Bronzeville Chef’s Revival and Homecoming

August 11, 2019

Parkway Ballroom

4455 S. Martin Luther King, Dr.

Chicago, IL    60603