Last Saturday’s grand opening of Freddie Mae’s Southern Cooking brought an unexpected rush of appreciative appetites, reports Black Voice News, coming for the secret recipes owner Freddie Mae Fort culled from her 97-year old mother and over 300 years of Fort family cooking. The restaurant springs from the family’s own Southern food catering business, long popular in the fast food chain-ravaged city where soul food was available only with a drive out of town.
Fort’s plates, which come priced around $8, are cooked from scratch and take a “healthy” approach to artery-ravaging soul food, substituting smoked turkey for fatback to cook greens and black eyed-peas in, as well as baking and using light oils instead of deep frying or butter. “No pork, chitlins, beef, lard, pigs feet or artificial ingredients,” Fort boasts.
A healthy soul food restaurant makes sense in a town with locally-source bar food and a growing movement of independent businesses from pop-ups to mom-and-pop chefs. According to first-time eaters, the food hasn’t suffered any setbacks due to its lighter ambitions. In any case, another family-run restaurant to compete with corporate slop is a great addition to Fontana as is another carefully cultivated, archivist’s approach to traditional U.S. cuisine. As Fort says, “Soul food is not only an African-American treasure…it’s an American treasure.”
Freddie Mae’s Southern Cooking is now open at 13677 Foothill Blvd. Suite H. Fontana.
909-899-6237.
’Healthy’ Soul Food Eatery Opens With Fanfare [Black Voice News]
