Pod Insights The Sporkful Can A Restaurant Be For Everyone? (Reheat) About this episode "White people are comfortable anywhere," says restaurateur Andy Shallal. "In order for a black person to walk into a space, there need to be signals that say, 'You're welcome.'" In this week's show we decode those signals, which include the decor and music, the staff and other customers, and more.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:42 Dan Pashman? The mini golf alone is probably worth, it's like the mini golf capital of the country. They have the most incredible elaborate mini golf courses. They also have more than 80 championship, full-size golf courses, plus 60 miles of beautiful coastline, all-season sunshine. Of course, you can relax by the beach or the pool. There's also jet skiing, fishing charters, paddle boarding, and of course, food. Oh, man, did we eat well in Myrtle Beach. From fresh, local seafood to craft burgers and craft beers to kebabs on the boardwalk. With more than 2,000 restaurants to choose from, from legendary no-frill seafood shacks to chef-driven dining, Myrtle Beach has it all. Plus, live entertainment at the beach, there's always something epic going on. So, summer may be winding down, but in Myrtle Beach, you're gonna find the coastal vacation of your dreams all year long.
1:27 Dan Pashman? Start planning your ultimate beach vacation at visitmyrtlebeach.com.
1:34 Dan Pashman? Hey, everyone, Dan here with another reheat for you. This episode was part of a series we did on race, culture, and food called "Who Is This Restaurant For?" It was about the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that a restaurant may show who its target audience is, and by extension, who it isn't. Katie in Midland, Michigan, asked us to reheat this one, saying, "I'm in the performing arts industry, and I think of this episode often." Tabitha, another listener, also wrote in to say that this series is actually what turned her into an active Sporkful subscriber. She writes, "It was such an interesting take on race and class that I never considered and helped to identify biases in myself." So, thank you so much to Tabitha and Katie for writing in, and a reminder to all of you that if you have an episode you'd like us to pull out of the deep freezer and reheat, drop me a line, send me an email or voice memo at [email protected] .
2:17 Dan Pashman? Tell me your first name, location, what episode you want us to reheat, and why. Thanks and enjoy.
2:24 Dan Pashman? This episode contains explicit language.
2:30 Speaker 01 White people will go and discover the coolest place in the back of a trailer park. They're comfortable anywhere. It could be very uncomfortable for a black person to walk into an all-white place. It could even be dangerous. In order for a black person to walk into a space, there has to be signals that says, "You're welcome."
2:53 Dan Pashman? Every time you walk into a restaurant, you're bombarded with signals, codes that tell you what kind of place it is and whether it's for you. Some signals are obvious: the food, the decor, the prices. But others are more subtle.
3:07 Speaker 02 It's the uniform, or lack thereof, that somebody's wearing. It's a tablecloth that's there or not there.
3:13 Dan Pashman? Then there's the people working there and the other customers. Those are codes, too.
3:18 Speaker 03 Why don't white people feel comfortable around black people? What is on your mind when you can't go into a restaurant when there are people that don't look like you?
3:29 Dan Pashman? Today on The Sporkful, we're asking the question, can a restaurant be for everybody? And if it could, is that even what people want?
3:37 Speaker 01 People want to be in a space as integrated, but it's hard to do it.
3:41 Speaker 04 Some people want integration. I've traveled the country enough to know a lot of people absolutely don't want that. They're looking for a place where they feel comfortable. And for a large citizen of this country, comfortable means people who look like me, act like me, and smell like me.
4:07 Dan Pashman? This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. This week, I'm really excited to have a co-host for this episode: my friend and colleague Kat Chow. She used to cover race and culture for the excellent NPR podcast and blog Code Switch. Hey, Kat.
4:26 Speaker 05 Hey, Dan.
4:27 Dan Pashman? So we're going to spend a lot of this episode going to different restaurants in Washington, DC, where you live. You're going to be my tour guide, right?
4:33 Speaker 05 Totally.
4:34 Dan Pashman? OK, all right, I'm ready for that.
4:35 Speaker 05 All right, but first, let's go to Todd Kleiman. Dan, you kind of know a little bit more about his work.
4:41 Dan Pashman? Yeah, so Todd Kleiman is a writer and a reporter based in DC. He was a restaurant critic in DC for years. And he actually taught literature at Howard University, which is a historically black college in DC. Todd, however, is white and his experience teaching at Howard had a big impact on him.
4:58 Speaker 02 Within that time that I was on campus, I was always the other. And so that was fascinating. It's not to say that I, you know, I shed my skin and I became this other person. But it is to say that I was, I was made to see with other eyes and to, to feel what that's like and how hard that can be, how amazing it can be, how, how just different it can be.
5:20 Speaker 05 Todd says that in his work as a restaurant critic, he became very aware of the racial mix he saw at different restaurants. Most of the time, there wasn't much of a mix and Todd, he wanted to try to understand why not.
5:34 Dan Pashman? That led him to write an article about the signals restaurants send. It was called Coding and Decoding Dinner. It was published in Oxford American. A code in a restaurant is any detail that sends a message. A tablecloth says you're expected to talk quietly to know how to peruse a wine list. If you haven't had that experience, you might not fit in here. Loud music says, hey, if you like to party, come on in. If you're a little older, maybe you don't hear so well, you should probably look elsewhere. And there are other prices. If you're in a neighborhood where rents are going up, a new restaurant with high prices tells you, we're just counting the days till you're gone.
6:08 Speaker 05 Racial codes in restaurants are especially important in DC, which has been called Chocolate City. But since 1970, the black population has dropped from 71% to 50%. Here's Todd Kleiman again.
6:21 Speaker 02 DC is this mix of, you know, now you've got 25 to 35 year olds representing close to 40% of the population. And at the same time, you have a lot of older black folks who have been here a long time and make up, you know, what you could think of as sort of the indigenous population. You see these kind of grinding edges in the gentrification debate. It's troubling because you have so many places now that are opening in these, these kind of transitional neighborhoods. And you have white restaurateurs who don't seem to understand. Where they are. And they don't, you know, they may say, well, you know, we want, we want everybody to come.
7:04 Speaker 02 But people are not going to come just because you want them to come. And particularly if you're trying to bring folks together, you have to make conscious decisions to do that.
7:16 Speaker 05 One person who has made those kinds of conscious decisions to try to attract a diverse crowd is Andy Shallal. He's an Iraqi-American who owns a restaurant in DC called Bus Boys and Poets. The first one opened in 2005, and now there are six around the city. Later in the show, we'll go there and talk with Andy. Todd Kleiman says Bus Boys is full of codes, from their murals of civil rights leaders to the menu.
7:41 Speaker 02 I remember having a conversation with Andy Shallal before Bus Boys and Poets opened. And he said, look, we're going to have chorizo, but we're not going to call it chorizo. We're going to call it pepperoni. Some people think that the decisions he made were actually not just self-conscious, but even pandering.
7:57 Dan Pashman? But Bus Boys is one of the most integrated spaces in DC. And the mix of people in any restaurant, that's another code. You walk in, you see who's working there, who else is eating there, tells you what kind of place it is.
8:10 Speaker 05 Yeah. Whenever I go to a Chinese restaurant with my friends, who are also Asian-American, if we see other people who look like us, other Asians, it kind of sends this signal to us that maybe this is a place for us.
8:23 Dan Pashman? And restaurateurs know that a lot of us feel that way. That's why they put thought into the mix of their customers and the signal that it sends.
8:31 Speaker 02 Well, I heard one restaurateur tell me about something called the 60/40 rule. I mean, he said it off the record. The rule is that, that if you have a restaurant and your population, the mix goes from more than 60% white and 40% black. If it starts becoming 42% black, 45% black, very quickly, it'll be a very slippery slope, and it'll become a majority-black restaurant in no time. And I think there was a sense from him that to become a majority-black restaurant or an all-black restaurant would have been bad for business.
9:10 Dan Pashman? Todd says he heard about the 60/40 rule from a couple of other white restaurateurs. We reached out to Professor Krishnendu Ray, chair of the Food Studies Department at NYU and author of The Ethnic Restaurateur. We asked him about this idea that says that if more than 40% of a restaurant's customers are black, white people won't go there. Have you ever heard of this rule?
9:31 Speaker 06 I have not heard of this specific rule.
9:33 Dan Pashman? But does the idea underlying it ring true to you?
9:35 Speaker 06 It does ring true to me. It rings very true. And I would do the analogy through residential segregation. So there's a rich literature on housing, and there's a lot of interesting work which says when a number of African Americans in a neighborhood reaches a threshold, it can flip, you will have white flight.
9:55 Dan Pashman? To be clear, evidence of the 60/40 rule is anecdotal. Back with Todd Kleiman. Kat asked a question she'll be asking each of our guests today.
10:04 Speaker 05 Can you make a restaurant for everybody?
10:10 Speaker 02 I think maybe you could try, but restaurants have always been about creating us versus them. You know, we like to think that food is about inclusion. We like to think that restaurants are places where we bring everybody together, and they can be. But very often, very, very often, there are places where we mark. Restaurants are exclusionary spaces.
10:34 Dan Pashman? I suspect, Todd, that some people who are listening to our conversation are thinking, they're hearing a white guy and me sitting here, having this conversation, and probably thinking like, who the hell are these guys?
10:52 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm. Right, no skin in the game, I think is the phrase.
10:55 Dan Pashman? Like, what do you say when you get that reaction?
10:59 Speaker 02 Well, I haven't had that reaction, but I can anticipate that reaction. My reaction would be, yeah, I can see why anybody would be maybe bothered, but most people don't know how I've grown up. They don't know the experiences I've had. I'm not coming at this, I think, in a surface way. And I think that the best conversations, if we're talking simply about black and white here, the best conversations will make both black and white feel uncomfortable.
11:34 Dan Pashman? That's Todd Kleiman. His piece in Oxford American is called Coding and Decoding Dinner. We'll link to it at sporkful.com. Coming up, Kat and I visit three restaurants in DC that are coded in really different ways, including busboys and poets, which we just discussed. We'll talk to the owners and customers to see what happens when the signals a place sends bring certain people in and keep others out. Stick around.
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15:29 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. A lot of times, people want to ask me, like, oh, what are you cooking? What restaurants are you going to? They ask Emma and Andres and the whole Sporkful team the same questions. Well, it turns out, we provide a listener service to you that includes that information. It's our newsletter. We don't send it out all the time. We're not going to spam you. We're just going to send you useful information, recipes, restaurant information, links to articles that we're reading, shows that we're watching. And guess what else? You'll be automatically entered into giveaways for cookbooks featured on the show, as long as you live in the US or Canada. That's also where I'll email you to tell you about, like, special sales happening on this Folini website, about discounts on pasta and stuff. So there are a lot of benefits, and you can sign up right now while you're listening. Head on over to sporkful.com/newsletter to sign up today.
16:12 Dan Pashman? Again, that's sporkful.com/newsletter. Thanks. Now, back to this week's reheat. Okay, back to the show. And I want to welcome back my co-host for this episode, reporter Kat Chow, formerly of the NPR podcast and blog Code Switch. Hey again, Kat.
16:29 Speaker 05 Hey, Dan.
16:30 Dan Pashman? Kat and I hopped in a cab and headed out to visit three restaurants around DC to see how different places send different codes to customers. Now, if you're going to open a restaurant, one of the biggest decisions you make is where to open it. Typically, you're going to want to send signals to attract the people who live nearby, right? But when a neighborhood starts changing and new people start moving in, that can get complicated. Thanks, a good one.
16:59 Speaker 05 We went to a cafe, video and bookstore called St. Kofa. It's right near Howard University in the Georgia Ave area. It's a predominantly black neighborhood with a lot of history. But gentrification, it's closing in from all sides.
17:14 Speaker 05 Here's Sharikiana Garima. She's black. She and her husband, Hilei, are co-founders of St. Kofa.
17:20 Speaker 03 My husband and I make movies. And the movie that this establishment is named after is called St. Kofa. And that was made 25 years ago. So it takes place during slavery. And it's very much immersed in the idea of resistance. That resistance had, was the determining factor for slavery not continuing. And because there was such a gap in that kind of way of looking at our past, the film did really well in the context of independent filmmaking.
17:53 Dan Pashman? St. Kofa means going back to our past in order to go forward. Sharikiana and her husband used the money they made from the film to buy this building, right by Howard, where they've also taught. Their main goal was to have a place to produce more films.
18:06 Speaker 03 When we moved in here, we started looking at the space, thinking of the kind of creative things to do. And my crazy husband looks at the space downstairs and says, you know, why don't we have a bookstore here? Like, trying to figure out ways to fund these movies wasn't enough and distribute them wasn't enough. We opened a bookstore.
18:24 Speaker 05 The cafe was added more recently. As you enter, the sign above the door says, "Buy people of African descent, about people of African descent."
18:33 Dan Pashman? Inside, there's a small counter where you can get coffee, cookies, sandwiches. Then there's a larger space that fits about a dozen tables. Each sandwich on the menu is named after an independent black filmmaker. They tell me the most popular is the Kathleen Collins. She was the first black American woman to produce a feature-length film. And that sandwich is smoked salmon, pesto, dill, capers, red onion, organic spinach, and pepper jack cheese. Sounds really good. There's a screen in the back for showing films, and the walls are lined with videos and books by people like Malcolm X, W.E.B. Du Bois, and many more. When we were there, there were about 20 black people and one white person, not counting me.
19:13 Speaker 07 We wanted to have a black space. It is an intentional endeavor.
19:18 Speaker 05 This is Tensai Berhanu. He's black. He runs the café at St. Kofa.
19:23 Speaker 07 We feel it is important to have a space where we can explore our past meaningfully and to be able to discuss our current situation so that we have a better understanding of how to move towards our new future. It is an idea-based business.
19:38 Speaker 05 St. Kofa's mission, it hasn't changed much over the years, but the neighborhood around it has. More white people are moving in, and some of them say that St. Kofa doesn't feel like it's for them. On a local blog, a commenter referred to it as "an exclusive business."
19:54 Speaker 07 People wanted to be somewhat politically correct, so they didn't say that this is a black space, but they put it under quote "exclusive." You know, some did say they don't feel comfortable being here. Some said, "Unless you have issues with yourself." I haven't had any problems coming in here. I come in here, the people are pleasant, I get my cup of coffee, and I go.
20:16 Speaker 03 DC is losing its black culture.
20:19 Dan Pashman? Here again is Sharikiana Garima.
20:21 Speaker 03 When you plow into a community that is primarily black, has been black...
20:28 Speaker 03 And in the middle of gentrification, and then build that so-called safe space for everybody. Is it safe for those people that are being displaced? It's ushering in a gentrified era. So Anacostia will not be, or Southeast will not be what it was before that restaurant came, to make it a safe place for, let's be real, for white people coming across the bridge, to feel comfortable. So we can fool ourselves in a certain way, or we can be honest.
20:57 Dan Pashman? We asked Shiri Kiana and Tensai about the 60/40 rule. If your customers in a restaurant are more than 40% black, white people won't go there.
21:10 Speaker 05 You're making a face.
21:12 Speaker 03 Wow. I didn't know about that.
21:17 Speaker 05 And not that they were...
21:18 Speaker 03 It's sort of something that you sort of know without articulating it. I mean, you...
21:23 Dan Pashman? Because how often do you ever go into a restaurant where the customers are 80% black?
21:28 Speaker 03 You know, constantly.
21:30 Dan Pashman? Really?
21:31 Speaker 03 Really?
21:32 Dan Pashman? Tell me, we'll go.
21:33 Speaker 03 I mean, OK, so for... OK, keep in mind, how long have you guys been here?
21:38 Speaker 05 I've been here for four years.
21:40 Dan Pashman? I'm actually based in New York.
21:44 Speaker 03 One of the things that I'm noticing about this current era of gentrification is that it's been so complete that I feel like I'm speaking to aliens. The questioning should be on the revert... in the reverse. Just flip it a bit. Why don't white people feel comfortable around black people? And if you answer that question, maybe you can figure out why it's so necessary to displace them in order to live with them. So nobody's ever said, "Don't come to DC because you're white." I've never heard anybody say that. "Come, be my neighbor. Buy the house up the street, next door to me. I don't care." But do I have to be displaced for you to live here?
22:28 Speaker 03 Is your coming here contingent on my leaving? And when you come, can you look at me and say, "Oh, that's interesting. Let me come and look at your restaurant"? As opposed to starting to ask me, "What's wrong with me for being here? What is on your mind when you can't go into a restaurant when there are people that don't look like you? Sit the hell down and order something. Be quiet."
22:52 Speaker 05 One of the questions that I've been wondering about is, can a restaurant be for everybody?
22:58 Speaker 03 Why wouldn't it be for everybody?
23:00 Speaker 02 Having to address this kind of question becomes absurd.
23:03 Speaker 03 It's absurd. It's really absurd. I don't, and I really don't want to answer a question like that. What restaurant's not for anybody? I feel like I'm upside down. Racism's affecting me. So I shouldn't have to justify being who I am because racism has turned things upside down.
23:23 Dan Pashman? And I don't want, I hope you don't take Kat's question or my questions to suggest that you need to justify anything. But I guess to sort of piggyback on what she was asked, Kat was asking. You know, in the process of working on this show, I've spoken, you may not feel this way, but I know I've spoken to other African Americans who say when they go into a restaurant, if they're the only black person and every other customer there is white, they don't feel so welcome in that space. And I suspect that many white people would say the same if they were the only white person in a space where everyone else was black. I'm sorry, I just want to understand, is it that you don't think people do feel that way? Or you feel like they shouldn't feel that way?
24:06 Dan Pashman? I'm just trying to understand your perspective.
24:11 Speaker 03 Okay, so I'm so used to going to white restaurants, into white airplanes, into white everything, that how would I feel uncomfortable? I mean, unless I've adjusted to a level of discomfort, and maybe that has happened. But I live in a white world. Do you know what that means? No. I live in a world that's white. So I'm not, it's not only white, but it's defined by whiteness. I'm supposed to, you know, my hair is supposed to be straight and flowy. I'm supposed to have, you know, a svelte, whatever, white frame, you know, even that's narrow and stereotypic.
24:53 Speaker 03 I'm supposed to be able to speak in a white framework. I'm supposed to be able to, you know, do a number of things that are defined by somebody else's way of being. So when do I walk down the street and not feel uncomfortable?
25:27 Speaker 05 After speaking with Shirikiana and Tensai, we talked with some Sankofa customers. We asked one group of four why they chose this spot. Here's Aaron.
25:35 Dan Pashman? It's also one of the few places that has consistently good vegetarian and vegan food. So as a black vegetarian, sometimes vegan when I can make myself do it, it's one of the few places that I can come to eat and have radical conversations and then pop over and buy a book of poetry by a Muri Baraka. You remember earlier, we talked about Bus Boys and Poets, which is one of the most integrated restaurants in DC, although it's also been accused of pandering. Kat and I started telling this group at Sankofa about the story we're working on. And before we mention Bus Boys...
26:09 Speaker 05 Are we gonna name it? You don't necessarily need to name it.
26:12 Dan Pashman? Because I feel like if you're gonna have a real conversation, you should talk about the role that Bus Boys and Poets plays and tries to pretend like they're super radical and then just commoditizes people of color radical experience. And they put up MLK and was it the Dalai Lama, MLK and Gandhi? And it's like, dream, faith, love. One member of this group, Rebecca, is white. She also has issues with Bus Boys.
26:37 Speaker 07 I think a lot of my beef with Bus Boys and Poets, right, is it's selling a version of diversity that is the like, white people love that version of diversity. It's like a cleaned up, like, we can all be on the same team and like, diversity can be beautiful and social justice can be beautiful. And yet, underneath, an actual diversity is a lot of pain and a lot of discord. And I think, in the same way that white people, we feel like, you know, everything should be comfortable for us, like, diversity in a restaurant should also be comfortable for us. And so Bus Boys is selling this form of diversity that's comfortable, that's packaged, that's...
27:08 Speaker 05 Cleaned up, that's not actually real. At this point, Dan turned to another member of the group, Brittany. She's black.
27:17 Dan Pashman? Why is it so hard to just create a restaurant where you see a really integrated mix of people? And where they can all feel welcome and respected and treated the way they deserve to be treated?
27:32 Speaker 07 When you think about like any small place like this restaurant, restaurants in general, it's like a microcosm of the real world. And that's not real in the real world, so why would we expect it in this place? You know, and maybe we're being presumptive in that. We assume people want that, that we want to be integrated, we want to sit beside each other. I think maybe what we see, you know, maybe white people, when they see what they like, they don't want to sit beside it, they want to have it. They want to wear it like a costume. You know, we're not interested in being, sitting beside each other. We're interested in having what we want to have, period.
28:14 Dan Pashman? From St. Kofa, Kat and I got into a cab and headed to Slim's Diner.
28:18 Speaker 05 Slim's Diner, which is about a mile up north on the same street, Georgia Ave, as St. Kofa. Completely different neighborhood, Petworth, which is a neighborhood that's basically being gentrified and becoming less black.
28:32 Dan Pashman? As we drove, we passed new luxury buildings with big "For Lease" signs, an African hair braiding place, and Starbucks. The owner of Slim's is a guy named Paul Rupert. He's white. Kat listed the places he owns, or used to own.
28:46 Speaker 05 He owns Petworth Citizen, which is actually right around the corner from where we're driving now. He used to own a place called Crane and Turtle, which was more of a sit-downy restaurant. And then he also owns Slim's Diner, in addition to a bunch of other places all around DC.
29:01 Dan Pashman? A high-end cocktail bar called The Passenger?
29:03 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, a high-end cocktail bar called The Passenger.
29:05 Dan Pashman? So he's like, he's a pretty big deal in the DC restaurant scene?
29:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly. And we want to get out here, so.
29:10 Dan Pashman? Okay.
29:10 Speaker 05 Do you mind pulling over to the right here?
29:15 Dan Pashman? Paul Rupert says he knew this area was changing. He saw that new people were moving in and he saw business opportunity. But his goal with Slims is to appeal to both the newcomers and the folks who've been there a long time.
29:28 Speaker 05 From the looks of it, it's working. When we were there, we were struck not only by how racially diverse the crowd was, but also the range of ages. We saw 20-somethings, parents with young kids, and middle-aged couples. Basically, the kind of crowd you'd expect at a classic diner. And the staff is just as diverse.
29:47 Dan Pashman? Then there's the decor. Big cushy red booths, Formica tables, a counter with stools. The place is such a quintessential diner, it almost looks like a movie set. Todd Kleiman, who we talked to at the start of the show, he says that's by design. From a coding perspective, Slims is sort of a blank slate. But that lack of overt signals, it's still a choice. It's still self-conscious. And owner Paul Rupert says the name of the place is no exception.
30:13 Speaker 07 By choosing the name Slims, that's a kind of a traditional nickname that, to me, doesn't have connotations of race, for instance. It's an older nickname, so it hearkens back to an older time.
30:27 Speaker 05 Paul's other restaurants have dishes like Day Boat scallops and beet mousse. At Slims, it's things like omelets, pancakes, burgers, pie.
30:35 Speaker 07 The food itself is inexpensive. It's a traditional diner, although there are some modern components to it. There's lots of vegetarian offerings, there's lots of gluten-free offerings, and there are no esoteric ingredients. You know, when we were first working on the project, I interviewed lots of chefs. And one of our, a promising candidate in our third meeting, he said, "I want to do duck bacon." Now, I love duck bacon, but it doesn't belong in my mind on the menu at Slims Diner. Now, it could belong on a menu at another diner, a fancier diner, but that's not something that I wanted. And so, we ended up not hiring that candidate because of that.
31:19 Dan Pashman? Walk me through the chain reaction. Like, duck bacon sends what message to what people and makes who less likely to come?
31:28 Speaker 07 Well, it's not that it makes people less likely to come, it's really... It sends the same message to everyone, which is that that regular bacon is not good enough and that we're serving fancy bacon.
31:42 Dan Pashman? And.
31:43 Speaker 07 And it's the same message whether you're black, white, purple, or green, you know. Even people who are looking for status or elevation in their dining experience, they also, those same people at other times in their life, want a diner. On a Saturday morning, they're gonna want bacon and eggs.
31:59 Dan Pashman? Kat, I think this is the great moment for you to ask a recurring question.
32:03 Speaker 05 Okay, so my recurring question, I feel like we need to have a drum roll dance. Basically, can a restaurant be for everybody?
32:12 Speaker 07 No. You know, at Slims, we try to be for as many people as possible, but there are lots of people who don't wanna, don't wanna come here.
32:19 Dan Pashman? When you get that reaction, like, how does that make you feel?
32:23 Speaker 07 Well, it's impossible to be all things to all people, so I try my best to be welcoming to people, but I certainly understand there are lots of places I don't like to go, and I don't take that personally.
32:36 Speaker 05 Who would you imagine would feel not welcome here?
32:39 Speaker 07 Well, again, I hope everyone feels welcome here. I mean, that's the whole point. Who wouldn't feel welcome here? I mean, there's certainly, right, there's certain folks who have been in the neighborhood for a long time, who I'm sure have objections to someone from outside the neighborhood opening restaurants, and they have a different response, and some of them choose not to come here.
33:01 Dan Pashman? After talking with Paul, Kat and I spoke with some of the customers at Slims. We met a white family that had just moved into Petworth the day before. They told us why they picked this neighborhood.
33:11 Speaker 06 We wanted to have the traditional DC experience.
33:14 Speaker 05 Yes.
33:15 Dan Pashman? What are the elements of that experience?
33:18 Speaker 06 Walking distance to great restaurants like Slims, being in a multicultural community.
33:25 Speaker 05 Yeah.
33:26 Speaker 06 Great opportunities for our kids.
33:28 Speaker 05 Open, accepting.
33:29 Dan Pashman? One of the things that can be fraught when you move into a neighborhood, in part because it's a diverse neighborhood, is that the people who have been there for a long time may feel like you're not coming to live side by side, but that you're coming to displace them.
33:45 Speaker 05 Yeah.
33:46 Dan Pashman? Even if that's not your intention, that's sometimes how it's perceived. How do you navigate that?
33:52 Speaker 05 That's a really great question, and we've actually talked about that, and in some ways, I feel weird about it. Like, I don't want. Anybody to think, oh, God, you know, I have some snooty new neighbor, you know, I go out of my way to say hello to the people on the street. We don't want to be that guy.
34:10 Dan Pashman? Right.
34:11 Speaker 05 We don't want to be perceived as, in a negative way. We hope we're not. We also spoke with a middle-aged black woman named Barbara.
34:20 Dan Pashman? Barbara, do you live nearby?
34:22 Speaker 03 I live about less than a mile away.
34:25 Dan Pashman? How long have you lived in this area, in this neighborhood?
34:28 Speaker 03 My whole life. I grew up here. Live in the house I grew up in.
34:31 Speaker 05 How did you hear about this place?
34:33 Speaker 03 I drive by all the time, going to the library, and was very, very happy to see a restaurant in our area, extremely happy.
34:42 Dan Pashman? Why?
34:42 Speaker 03 Because there's not a lot to choose from except fast food, and they have vegetarian items on their menu, and I'm vegetarian. So I was very happy to see that.
34:53 Dan Pashman? I know that there's been a lot of changes in this neighborhood in the last few years. How are you feeling about those changes?
34:58 Speaker 03 I think it's great. I think that a more diverse neighborhood, lots of different kinds of folks moving into the area, lots of different restaurants, a lot of folks walking and moving around, I think it's wonderful. Everyone speaks, everyone's friendly. I think people make more of it who are from outside, who think that you should be having problems. There aren't any.
35:36 Dan Pashman? All right, Kat, give me like the DC residents rundown. What is Bus Boys and Poets?
35:42 Speaker 05 Okay, so Bus Boys and Poets, it's this sort of coffee shop, bookstore, restaurant, bar at night. The vibe of Bus Boys and Poets is that it's a place that seems to really care about social justice, and among people I know, it's seen as that place where like you go to listen to spoken word poetry, which is, I'll let you decide whatever that means.
36:06 Dan Pashman? Insert your opinion of spoken word poetry here.
36:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, and there are like six Bus Boys and Poets locations. One's in 14th Street, where we're going, the first one, and there are a bunch all around DC.
36:19 Dan Pashman? Bus Boys is owned by Andy Shallal, who's Iraqi-American. We went to the original location. It's in a neighborhood called U Street, which is kind of sacred ground in the DC black community.
36:29 Speaker 05 Yeah, during the Jim Crow era, it was called Black Broadway. It's where Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway performed. It's where Thurgood Marshall and Langston Hughes lived. In fact, the name Bus Boys and Poets is a reference to Hughes, who was a busboy before becoming a poet.
36:44 Dan Pashman? In the late 60s, this area saw some of the country's worst race riots. After that, a lot of factors came together to decimate the neighborhood: government neglect, corruption, and more. The causes are complicated and not really the topic we're covering today.
37:00 Speaker 05 But over the past 10 years or so, U Street has changed again. Now, it's the most gentrified neighborhood of the three we're visiting.
37:08 Dan Pashman? When we first went into Bus Boys, I was struck by how huge the space is. I mean, it's not a hybrid space. There's a whole restaurant, and a whole bookstore, and a bar, and a lounge, and a performance space, which is where you see that mural we heard so much about with MLK and Gandhi and so many others on it. The customers were a real mix. The first woman you'll hear is white. The next two are black.
37:29 Speaker 05 I look for restaurants that are vegetarian-friendly, and this one is fabulous in that regard. And it also has the, for me, the added bonus of being an art-filled, artful space that's very community-minded, lots of good social justice causes. So I appreciate that.
37:48 Speaker 03 Because it's Bus Boys and Poets, I just expect it to be so diverse because that's what they intend. They do that so intentionally, and they do it well.
37:58 Dan Pashman? Can you tell me, just in general, when you walk into a restaurant, what are some of the things that you look for that maybe tell you that you are more or less welcome?
38:10 Speaker 03 So if I walk in and there's a host stand that someone greets me, yeah, then I'm treated like my money is green.
38:21 Speaker 05 That specific issue of how people are greeted when they walk in the door, it was something that we heard from a lot of people of color we talked with.
38:29 Speaker 01 In order for a black person to cross the threshold to walk into a space, there has to be signals that says, "You're welcome."
38:38 Dan Pashman? This is Andy Shallal, owner of Busboys & Poets. He says at Busboys, those signals include the music, the staff, the prices, the decor. Then there's the menu, which is as diverse as the customers he's trying to attract. There is soul food like catfish and shrimp and grits, Middle Eastern options like falafel and baba ganoush, lots of vegetarian and vegan choices, and then burgers and pizza.
39:00 Speaker 05 Andy was inspired to create a space like Busboys from his own experience. So he and his family, they came to the US from Iraq when he was 10 in 1966. That was the height of the civil rights era.
39:13 Speaker 01 It's very weird to come from a country that doesn't have race as a defining distinction between folks. To come in here and suddenly, race is so hard in this country, such a straight line. You're black or you're white. And that's changing a little bit. You know, people are choosing biracial and choosing other and choosing all these. When I came here, that was not a choice. If you did not pick on the box whether you're black or white, somebody picked it for you by eyeballing. I never fit in. I did not fit in in spaces that were like uniquely one or uniquely the other. I thought, "I need a space of my own.
39:56 Speaker 01 I need a space that I could feel comfortable in." People want to be in a space that's integrated. They want to be in spaces where different people come in, all feel good about being here. But it's hard to do it.
40:10 Dan Pashman? In order to do it, Andy goes way beyond offering a diverse menu and hiring a diverse staff. He runs a special orientation with every group of new employees.
40:19 Speaker 01 And I say, "I want to know about you and I want to know about your experience with race." And sometimes jaws drop. Sometimes people get very uncomfortable. I let people leave.
40:33 Speaker 05 So in that way, you're trying to create a culture. But how do you?
40:37 Speaker 01 How do you translate that?
40:38 Speaker 05 How do you translate that into, okay, you want to make sure like?
40:41 Speaker 01 So then, so then we start talking about how it relates to what we do here. And why is race important when it comes to service and restaurants? And I'll tell them like an example. I say, you have a Saturday morning and you're serving brunch. And it's first thing in the morning. And you just open the door and you're the host at the front. Doesn't matter if you're black or white, you're the host. A black couple walks in.
41:11 Speaker 01 The entire restaurant is open. You walk the black couple all the way to the back and see them in that booth over there.
41:18 Speaker 01 The best booth in the house, in my opinion.
41:22 Speaker 01 I said, what is the black couple thinking?
41:26 Speaker 01 Right? You're putting them in the back of the, of the room. Why are you hiding me? They get upset. Now, sometimes people will say, I don't want to sit here. And you'll move them. Sometimes they'll just be upset. And then the waiter, the young perky white waiter walks up to them and they're a black couple. And they're not even looking at them because they're looking at the menu. And they're thinking, what a racist fucking place. And, and all of a sudden, the white waiter is thinking angry black people. Right? And things started to deteriorate. Now, I, so then we say, let's take a white couple. They walk in through the door and they're the first customers. And you bring the white couple all the way in that corner. What's the white couple thinking?
42:08 Dan Pashman? All the way to the same table.
42:09 Speaker 01 Same table. What are they thinking?
42:11 Dan Pashman? Oh, look, we got the best table.
42:13 Speaker 05 Windows, yeah.
42:14 Speaker 01 Exactly. What a quaint little space. We got the whole place to ourselves. It's even empty. Like, how cute is that?
42:21 Speaker 01 So the idea of I'm blind to race gets you in trouble. We don't want, I said, I don't want you ever to be blind to race. When you see a table walk in, racialize them immediately. And understand how you represent. If you're a white blond man and you're waiting on two elderly black women, the experience is going to be very different than if you're a young black man waiting on two elderly black women. And you have to accommodate for that. I'm not saying that you have to give better service or worse service. Just be aware. Be aware of your presence and modulate. Modulate your energy, modulate your behavior.
43:02 Speaker 01 It's very key, I think, to be able to create a place that is welcoming.
43:10 Speaker 05 Can a restaurant be for everybody?
43:13 Speaker 01 I think we can certainly try. I don't think any restaurant could be for everybody. I mean, we have people that can't afford to eat here or drink here. That's not going to be for everybody. But it certainly can be for the majority of people and be representative of the community that it's in.
43:31 Speaker 05 We asked Andy about some of the criticisms that Busboys receives. The idea that the mural or the whole approach in general are somehow pandering.
43:41 Speaker 01 I grew up here when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was alive. I was here and I experienced it. To me, he's my leader as well. He's not a black leader. He's not a different, he's also a leader that I looked up to. So I don't want to say, well, I can't touch him because he's black. That doesn't make sense. I think there's also a difference between exploitation and uplifting of a culture. We don't just put up like pictures of iconic figures on the wall and everything else is like different. We actually integrate what we do into all the things that we do. What we do here is really allow for everybody's identity to come through, to feel like they see themselves in this space. They see themselves with the people sitting next to them eating.
44:26 Speaker 01 They see themselves in the person that's serving them or the person that's managing the place. So I think that helps people to feel more comfortable in their own skin. And once they do that, they're able to move on.
44:47 Dan Pashman? A few updates on the restaurants featured in this episode. Sankofa Video Books and Cafe, where we went first, remains open for business. Slims Diner, our second stop, closed permanently in 2019. Owner Paul Rupert told the Petworth News, quote, "Slims has been open for two and a half years as a money-losing business. Although things have improved recently, we are not close to breaking even, and it's time to pull the plug and try with a new concept." As for Busboys and Poets, our last stop, they've expanded. They currently have nine locations in the DC metro and Baltimore areas. Thank you to my friend and colleague Kat Chow, reporter and writer, for co-hosting this episode. Since this episode was first published, Kat released a memoir called See in Ghosts, which came out in 2021 from Grand Central Publishing.
45:31 Dan Pashman? This show is produced by me, along with senior producer-
45:33 Speaker 05 Emma Morgenstern.
45:34 Dan Pashman? And producer- Andres O'Hara. Production on this episode by Anne Sandy, editing by Rebecca Carroll, Lee Hill, and Erva Gunja. Our engineer is- Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. Thanks to all our friends at NPR and Code Switch, especially Kat Chow, Gene Demby, Keith Woods, Alison McAdam, and Rund Abdelfattah. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
46:01 Speaker 07 I'm Shalita from Walkill, New York, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
46:18 Dan Pashman? This reheat was produced by-
46:19 Speaker 05 Gianna Palmer.
46:21 Dan Pashman? The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer-
46:24 Speaker 05 Emma Morgenstern.
46:25 Dan Pashman? And senior producer- Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is- Jared O'Connell. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producers are Nora Ritchie and Colin Anderson. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful.
47:04 Dan Pashman? We know life-
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