Black Restaurant Experience

“People in Richmond don’t talk to each other,” said Kelli Lemon, owner of Urban Hang Suite. She created her coffee shop last year to make a comfortable space for customers to connect with one another despite their differences.

Lemon is also tri-owner of the Virginia Black Restaurant Experience — an opportunity for people throughout the Richmond and Henrico area to connect and to enjoy the diversity of meals offered by black-owned restaurants.

The third annual Richmond Black Restaurant Experience starts Sunday and runs through March 10. This year the event features 30 restaurants as well as food trucks, caterers and local chefs.

The theme is Culture Meets Cuisine, and the food is served up for a good cause: It will raise money for the Mary G. Brown Transitional Center, a nonprofit agency that helps people with housing, job training and other services. With every event ticket purchased, proceeds will go directly to the center. Events that serve alcohol will give 100 percent of their sales to the center.

Urban Hang Suite, located at 304 E. Broad St., is a coffee shop that offers a traditional grab n’ go setting in the front with an open space in the back for people to connect. Photo by Madison Manske.

Each restaurant participating in the RBRE will have a passport that lists all other restaurants included in the experience. Mama J’s, Vagabond, Pig & Brew and Urban Hang Suite are a small handful of what to expect — with vegan options available at certain restaurants.

Throughout the week, the RBRE will also sponsor various events that require a ticket:

Mobile Soul Sunday on Sunday (March 3)
A Seat At The Table — Dinner Party Social on Monday (March 4)
Zumba and Cocktails with Jackie Paige and DJ Nobe on Monday (March 4)
Wine Tasting and Pairing at C’est Le Vin on Tuesday (March 5)
Hip Hop Karaoke with Pro DJ Direct and Unlocking RVA on Tuesday (March 5)
Afrikana Film Festival – Invisible Vegan on Thursday (March 7)
ART for the SOUL on Friday (March 8)
Brunch Trolley Tour on Saturday (March 9)
Diaspora and Untold RVA on Saturday (March 9)
Stick A Fork In It! on Sunday (March 10)

In its first year, the RBRE consisted of 19 restaurants. Last year, 10 restaurants joined the list bringing it to 29. Every year, more jobs are created and more money is raised through special event ticket sales.

The experience was created by Lemon, Amy Wentz, and Shemicia Brown with the aim of addressing economic disparities within the city’s minority-owned business community as well as advancing Richmond’s growing culinary tourism scene.

The inaugural event helped launch the business the three women operate as Virginia Black Restaurant Experience. Events such as the Richmond Black Restaurant Experience operate under the VBRE umbrella, Lemon said. The women organize the annual RBRE with support from Dominion Energy.

“We felt like what we do is bigger than just a week, so we started Virginia Black Restaurant Experience,” Lemon said. “It’s just an experience of celebrating culture and cuisine that often times gets ignored for various different reasons.”

Benefiting a community organization

For the last two years, the beneficiary of the RBRE was Renew Richmond, an organization dedicated to increasing healthy food efforts by creating urban gardens and offering educational and other programs.

“We wanted to give someone else the opportunity to be able to grow their nonprofit,” Lemon said.

This year’s beneficiary, the Mary G. Brown Transitional Center, is a partner in the Richmond Food Justice Corridor, a network of organizations seeking to address food access, build community, reduce violence, inspire youth and accomplish other community goals.

Richmond is a popular food destination where Lemon says minorities in the food industry often get overlooked. When Lemon opened Urban Hang Suite in October, she wanted to open a space that allowed engagement to anyone who walks in the door.

Located at 304 E. Broad St., her coffee shop offers a traditional grab ’n’ go setting in the front with an open space in the back for people to connect.

According to Lemon, black-owned restaurants can face challenges in terms of obtaining financing, promoting and managing the business.

“Because of that lack, we found it important to be an assistant or just to be an ally to these restaurant owners in pursuit of giving them a true, proper place within the Richmond culinary scene,” Lemon said. “You have to realize that in some of these smaller black-owned restaurants, they’re the chef, they’re the marketer, the GM — they may be a host one day.”

Inner City Blues, home of Carolina Bar B Que, has participated in the RBRE every year so far. Co-owner Alicia Hawkins said she and her husband see higher sales each year, and that allows them to be more active in the business and the community.

“Richmond is a foodie town, and a lot of times with the small businesses, a lot of people don’t know that these small businesses exist,” Hawkins said. “I have customers come in all the time to say, ‘We didn’t know you were here,’ which is kind of strange.”

Before the restaurant moved to 3015 Nine Mile Road in 2014, it was Inner City Blues Takeout on Gilpin Court in Jackson Ward. When the landlord wanted to make changes, Hawkins and her husband had to relocate. After the owner of their current building retired, the space opened up for them.

“It was a business opportunity that it was just as if God had opened the doors,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins went to the original Armstrong High School. Having grown up in the area, she was familiar with her new business location.

Hawkins said the RBRE is a chance to showcase restaurants like hers.

“We also saw the lack of black-owned restaurants in the larger restaurant weeks,” Lemon said.

Richmond is home to many food festivals from Richmond Oktoberfest to Festival of India. According to Lemon, when VBRE was created, the organizers got criticized and called racist for celebrating African-American restaurants.

“We had to remind everyone of the other festivals that happen all the time in this city,” Lemon said. “All these festivals celebrated culture and heritage, and that’s all we’re trying to do.”

For a full list of participating restaurants and event/ticket sale information, visit www.vablackrestaurantexperience.com. The website also has a link for donations.

“It’s very important for those that are not familiar with this week to know that it is open to everyone,” Lemon said. “We hope that people come out of their comfort zones for this week.”

By Madison Manske, Capital News Service. Top Photo by Madison Manske.

For the second year, Richmond Black Restaurant Experience has animated the city, drawing attention to over 30 Black-owned restaurants from soul-food favorite Mama J’s to the craft cocktail-focused Minibar.

Richmond is gaining national recognition as a food city, with National Geographic, Zagat, the Washington Post and many other news outlets and publications declaring something organizers Kelli Lemon, Amy Wentz and Shemica Brown already knew: We’re the “next Great American Food City.”

The first year brought in over $500,000 for Black-owned restaurants in the city, and prompted a name-change from Black Restaurant Week, said co-organizer Kelli Lemon. “After the success of last year, we decided to make it a business [called] Virginia Black Restaurant Experience because we were doing so much more than eating.”

From the mobile soul food truck festival in Abner Clay Park, for which the Black History Museum opened its doors at a discounted rate, trap yoga at bareSOUL, The Basement at the Vagabond, and the culminating Stick A Fork In It festival, over 130 businesses participated in addition to the 30 featured restaurants.

The Stick A Fork In It festival featured chefs and caterers selling $3 to $5 plates, demonstrations and a cooking competition, and live sets from the Legacy Band and DJ Lonnie B.

One of many success stories from the expanded Black Restaurant Experience is reflected in Keva Miller, a chef and business owner who won best caterer at Stick A Fork In It. A few months earlier, I’d gone to Manchester Friday Fridays to see her cooking demonstration. We’d met a little over a year before and I wanted to support, especially as I noticed she was more consistently giving demonstrations and hosting events. She was doing a lot of work towards getting her catering license so she could cater larger events and do demonstrations for even larger crowds.

Fast forward five months and she’s on stage at Stick a Fork In It after a day of prepping in her shared commercial kitchen space. In a crop top branded with her company name, FeedShine, and joggers, she guided the audience through a demonstration of her massaged kale technique.

Miller giving a demonstration at Stick a Fork In It. Photo: Trevin Curtis

“Feedshine is a holistic lifestyle company that I started to be a one-stop shop for self-actualization, which is just a very complicated term for finding yourself,” said Miller of her catering and private chef service company.

She tells the story at every event with celebrity reflection. After undergrad, she had everything she needed and was living good working as a food service rep for Pepsi. Equipped with a company car, she went around to local chains as far north as Dale City and as far west as Goochland/Emporia convincing them to endorse Pepsi as their soda carrier. She came into the position with 1,200 customers and her job for the next three years was maintaining and getting more customers.

“I basically had everything that an entrepreneur would have without the full-on risk of having my own business,” she said. “Your job is basically free training, so you can get an MBA that you also get paid for if you pick the right position.”

In her final years with the company, she became painfully aware of internal work that she needed to do. On top of her phone ringing from 8 am until 8 pm, the constant hassle of connecting maintenance people to delivery guys at plants, meeting with prospects and ensuring that client accounts were secured before their business doors opened, she was fatigued by depression and just slept when she wasn’t at work. She was skipping breakfast and eating poorly. Things changed when she started having a little fun in the produce section.

“Really the first thing that kind of changed my life, which is a recipe that’s in my cookbook, was a green smoothie. I was always small my whole life so I had this misconception that I was healthy like yeah, my body looked great, but my mind and my heart were diseased. My metaphysical heart wasn’t in the right place, my spirit wasn’t in the right place.”

Southwest tacos and curry chickpeas at Stick a Fork In It. Photo: Trevin Curtis

The experience led to her cookbook, Trill Prep, which features over 100 recipes, affirmations and personal stories. It’s intended for people going through the same experience, transitioning towards healthier eating, so there is a mix of chicken, seafood, and plant-based recipes.

For Miller, writing the cookbook was about telling her story and giving people the kind of guide she wished she had.

“She’s been able to find this niche to be able to educate us and to be able to stay true, to stay real and then also deliver a product that’s like… damn, but it’s good though!” said Lemon, “I am not a vegan. I don’t eat right. But I will eat her food. If she had a brick and mortar, I would probably be one of her number one customers.”

For Miller, it was a dream come true.

“Then at the end of it, for me to win the overall [best] caterer when I just got my catering license in January, it was great,’ she said.

FeedShine was placed between Minibar, headed by Executive Chef Micah Crump, and Shawanda Harrison of Holistic Alaye, two vendors dear to Miller.

“I’ve looked up to chef Micah forever. I used to look at him like I want to do that one day,” she said. “I want to be in the place where I can feed hundreds, thousands of people. Just to be able to share a booth next to that man was beyond everything. And then Shay, my plant-based sister, we were the only ones in there rocking with the vegan food and we was in there serving our love.”

For Miller, the Experience was a way to introduce people to food they may not typically opt for when dining out.

“It was great. I just love seeing us both ascend to new heights doing what we love and giving people this vegan food that a lot of times some people might turn their noses up to, might not be feeling it, “ Miller said.

During Black Restaurant Week, Miller catered FeastRVA and hosted her first private tasting at The Broken Tulip, two items on her bucket list as a chef. Next, she’s conquering another long-term goal by hosting The Plant Bass’d Brunch, Richmond’s first plant-based brunch, for an event at Vagabond with the Weekend Plans band and DJ Ease.

“I love partying and I love eating great food so I wanted to figure out a way to do both and really give people the type of experience that I want,” she said. I’m a plant-based person. I got tired of having to go one place to turn up and then have to go to another place, you know, to eat because it ain’t no food for me at the function.”

The brunch runs from 12-3 PM at Vagabond on West Broad Street with a day party to follow on May 6.

Miller sells her cookbook on her website and uses Instagram to keep in touch with fans at @ChefKeva. Brunch tickets can be purchased in advance via Eventbrite.

Cover Photo By: Lechele Trent-Jackson. Other Photos Trevin Curtis. This story was updated to correct the brunch hours and the number of recipes in Miller’s book.

Culture Meets Cuisine At 2019’s Black Restaurant Experience

FeedShine’s Keva Miller Lights Up the Richmond Black Restaurant Experience