‘The Gilded Age’ Showcases Black-Owned Restaurants in an Era When Black Entrepreneurs Strived to Build Wealth and Recognition

Sullivan Jones, Amber Gray and Denée Benton in The Gilded Age Season 2, Episode 5 | Barbara Nitke/HBO

I did a little digging and discovered that James Hemings opened the first-ever Black-owned restaurant in the country. The classically French trained chef, who was enslaved and considered property of Thomas Jefferson, is widely credited now for introducing macaroni and cheese, creme brûlée, fries, ice cream and other now popular dishes to Americans.

His restaurant was tucked inside a small kitchen at 57 Maiden Lane in New York in March 1790. During its existence, he cooked for diplomats, government officials and other elites of the day. It operated, however, for only a few months because when Jefferson moved to Philadelphia later that year, Hemings moved with him.

It wasn’t until 1825 before another Black person opened a restaurant in NYC. That’s when Thomas Downing, a free Black man, opened Downing’s Oyster House with his son, George T. Downing. By the late 1830s, they had expanded into the next building, offering catering, takeout and shipping services.

While publicly the restaurant specialized in oyster pie, fried oysters, stuffed oysters and raw oysters and attracted the city’s power brokers, behind the scenes it served as part of the Underground Railroad to Canada.

The early 1850s was when a free Black woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant began building her fortune on the West Coast, which included restaurants, laundries, dairies, boarding houses and shares of Wells Fargo Bank stock. She used a white man named Thomas Bell to act as the face of her businesses so as not to draw suspicion and resentment.

If there were any Black female restaurateurs before Pleasant, I’ve yet to find them. I have found quite a few who opened establishments after her during the 1800s, in the 1880s and 1890s, namely Jane Outland and Callie Fugett in Denver and a former enslaved woman named Madame Earl in Washington, D.C.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised to see a Black woman owning a restaurant in HBO’s The Gilded Age series’ season 2, episode 5. The season is set in 1883 when more Black Americans were becoming involved in politics, education and entrepreneurial endeavors. [In season 1, episode 2, Denée Benton‘s Peggy Scott and her mother (played by Audra McDonald) dined in an upscale, Black-owned bistro in their Brooklyn neighborhood.]

Amber Gray portrays what is perhaps a composition of these fearless women during the episode; however, it’s unrealistic to imagine this restaurant in the American South during the Reconstruction era. Let me be clear: that means a restaurant owned by a Black man or woman.

With violent, racially motivated incidents running rampant during that period, there’s no way racists would have allowed this establishment to exist in peace. A nice, clean, well-patronized venue full of cheerful, well-dressed Black people in Alabama?! As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be ill fated. The South was a dangerous place for Black people to exist during that period, let alone prosper.

The closest story I could find happened in Washington, D.C. in August 1835. This was during slavery, and D.C. was a hotbed of activity for abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates. According to Snow-Storm in August (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2012), by Jefferson Morley, pro-slavery advocates were outraged that a free Black man named Beverly Snow owned and operated Beverly Snow’s Epicurean Eating House—one of the top restaurants in the city. They were looking for a reason to disrupt it, and they used a rumor as an excuse to destroy the restaurant and possibly him.

Snow and his family apparently caught wind of the riot before it happened and they escaped. They made their way to Canada where he opened several successful restaurants and businesses.

While today’s Black-owned restaurants continue to face discrimination, it’s thankfully no where near what their predecessors endured. Many of the offenses are micro-aggressive, yet still egregious, from being denied loans to restricted in where they can operate their businesses.

The stories of these pioneering restaurateurs have only emerged in recent years. It’s said that it took more than 200 years for Hemings’ contributions to the American culinary landscape to be recognized.

That’s why you’ll see more diversity with prominent organizations like the James Beard Foundation, Les Dames d'Escoffier International and Jean Banchet Awards. And there’s finally a depth of coverage of this country’s restaurants in major publications like Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Esquire, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post. So we have official records—and this never happens again.

If you’d like to see what I uncover next, please feel free to subscribe to The Awakening—and follow me on social media @iamaudarshia.