The Lost Southern Chefs by Robert F. Moss

Author:Robert F. Moss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Reconstructing Southern Commercial Dining

In the weeks and months following Union occupation, the South’s restaurateurs and caterers turned their attention to getting their businesses back up and running. Their experiences during the war had ranged from moderate disruption to downright disaster, and the path forward was by no means clear. For some, especially those in Charleston and Richmond, their restaurants had been physically destroyed—left in ruins by artillery shells or consumed by fire. Others faced legal and financial entanglements that dragged on in courts for years. The long supply chains that southern restaurateurs had developed over the course of several decades had been disrupted first by the years of blockade and then by the destruction of the southern railroad network. Their old customer base was shattered, too. A great many of the members of elite militia units and civic societies never returned from battle, and those who did faced greatly diminished fortunes. Commerce had long been the driving force behind public dining in the South, but with the region’s economy in tatters, the boom years of the 1840s and 1850s were left in the past.

African American restaurateurs faced a dual task in the immediate aftermath of war and Emancipation. They needed not only to relaunch their former establishments but to adapt those businesses to a market where laws and norms were very much in flux. It was a time of daunting challenges but also great opportunity, and the former leaders of the South’s culinary trade navigated them with varying degrees of success.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.