Personal Chefs & Our Roots in Black History

By Director of Culinary, Matt Larkin

At the entrance of the Museum of Food and Drink, located at the northeast corner of Central Park in New York City, there is a massive 14 by 30 ft. quilt composed of 406 blocks, each one containing an image that recognizes a contribution made to our nation’s culinary history by a Black American.

I went to the museum to see Jessica Harris speak and her tile on the quilt, as well as faces of historical icons like Edna Lewis and Leah Chase, or contemporaries like Carla Hall and Stephen Satterfield were easy to pick out, but one story that I was surprised to see on the wall was the founding of personal cheffing in America.

Most depictions of slave labor in our culture evoke images of rural Southern plantations, but urban enslavement was just as much a part of this country’s cultural landscape from its inception. Many slaves in America’s first cosmopolitan hubs often had day jobs outside of their master’s homes and one of the most common industries was food. As Jessica Harris notes in High on the Hog, “Despite curfews and strict laws governing their presence on the streets and in the marketplace [...] They became workers in taverns and eateries and sold prepared foods, vegetables, and other goods on the streets.”

After emancipation in the North, many former slaves continued to run dining establishments and food production businesses of their own. Emmanuel “Manna” Bernoon opened Providence, Rhode Island’s first oyster and alehouse in 1736 and a few years later in Newport, Charity “Duchess” Quamino established a catering business and gained renown for her frosted plum cakes.

For many Blacks in the earliest days of America’s history, culinary entrepreneurship was often the only path to independence and self-sufficiency, especially in bustling port cities like Boston, New York, and Washington D.C.

In the antebellum North, a public butler was often employed by households too small or too frugal to have a full-time service staff of their own. Unlike private butlers who would work for a single family, public butlers would organize meals and provide their services to a number of different households in a neighborhood. It was from this working arrangement that Robert Bogle, a public butler from Philadelphia’s South Ward, is often credited with founding America’s first catering company and in 1812 he opened his shop at 46 South Eighth Street.

Thomas Dorsey was arguably America’s most famous caterer and public chef of the era. Born as a slave on a Maryland plantation in the early 19th century, he would eventually escape as a young adult to Philadelphia. He was captured and returned, but was fortunate enough to make friends with northern abolitionists who purchased his freedom and brought him back to the city in the 1830s. By the middle of the century, “Dorsey served only the upper crust,” as Dr. Harris put it with menus that included oysters on the half shell, lobster salad, deviled crabs, filet de bouef, and champagne jelly, just to name a few of his luxurious offerings.

In High on the Hog, Dr. Harris goes on to list many other Black chefs known up and down America’s colonial coastline like Boston-based caterer Bowen Smith cooked at Harvard; James Wormley, who owned hotels and restaurants in D.C.; and New York City’s pickle king: Henry Scott. These men were just some of the many Black Americans who pursued dreams of freedom and full participation in American society through cooking.