Turning my Grandfather's Mechanic Shop Into my Dream Restaurant
I’m dreaming today Part 1
I’m dreaming today.
Dreaming about the potential of my grandfather’s mechanic shop, formerly known as Woodard’s Garage. In my dream, we have a special club…something members only. A supper club with live music that rivals any juke joint back in its heyday. An occasional restaurant that lives somewhere between a fine dining concept and your favorite diner. It’s open Friday through Sunday with a seasonal menu that tells the story of AfroCarolinian terroir and the beauty of its 3 regions and many sub regions. Menus that boast the wealth that lives in places like these, the clever, transformative kind that isn’t dependent on us clocking in and burning out.
Now, take a walk with me, through the moist fallen leaves surrounding the shop. Walk slow so that we don’t disturb the scarlet toned cardinal burrowing for his breakfast. It’s almost like they want to catch your eye, to remind you that your ancestors are near. Can you hear them?
We’ve arrived….and through a warm lit window we can hear the buzz of people excitedly receiving their first course. Clay bowls softly land on the tables as if they also don’t want to disturb the cardinals.
We are having Sunday Supper; Lobster and Dumplings. A fumet of roasted fish bones, with summer shrimp, lobster and crab shells, alliums and aromatics. This will come together in a steaming covered pot to make the stock for the hand rolled pastry noodles, simmered until tender. Each hot bowl of pastry adorned with butter poached prawns from the Pamlico Sound in the Outer Banks, tender crab, lobster claws and herbs like flowering tarragon in honor of the ways that women like Ms. Annaclyde, now 92, shows out EVERY Sunday. Dressing up her classic staples, embellished with brooches and accouterments.
On a stool I sit in the center of the room reciting a written pairing for this course, and you close your eyes and listen to the names of those who made this place so special.
“Oooh look at you, wearin’ your maroon featherweight wool. Your gold raw silk piped in leopard. Your double faced gabardine skirt suit with power shoulders and fur when it’s cold.
Look at the way your hat casts shadows for miles around you, canceled out by the glow on your cheekbones. Look at how good 90 looks. She is steadfast, unmovable, always abounding and arriving. The jewelry goes with the hat, the hat with the shoes, shoes with the coat, gloves, purse. It was you that inspired the Vogues and Bazaars, it was your work that made fashion possible.
You see Ms. Anna Clyde Burt grew up like a lot of young black women in the rural South, pickin’ cotton. The same cotton that would become someone's fashion, her hands touched it first. Blood from bol pricked fingers was bleached away in the process, but a stain like that can’t just be washed away. Stories of school days missed to work hot fields, the only days you’d find her in class was when it rained. They say you can’t pick wet cotton…”
This dream is bigger than feeding you all literally, It’s also about people leaving the space feeling full in all the ways. Feeling transformed and inspired to dream for ourselves.
I dream of staged storytelling with reenactments and the occasional Harlem Renaissance themed murder mystery. I see artist’s from all over the world coming to this place to tell stories of their culture work. Doing table reads or piloting plays they are still working on– paired with bites, tonics, local liquor and wine. I see film screenings, hearth and open fire cooking classes, exhibitions and community meetings.
I see a small larder style general store with walls of local jarred goods that preserve fruit and vegetables grown right up the road. Cookbooks selected by me and you, and special handmade textiles and folk art for sale that pay an equitable commission to the artists. A makers workshop where welding, woodwork, textile weaving, dying and sowing take place. Can you see it?
But before it becomes all of this, let’s talk a little about what it’s been.
Woodard’s Garage was a space that provided jobs for people in our community, it acted as an incubator for local small businesses, and created accessible repairs for truck drivers who otherwise might be gauged for work elsewhere (after already being paid a third of what white drivers made at the time). This building is also a creative space where ideas and intergenerational dreams have been and are being realized.
My grandfather Mayfield built this shop with help from a few friends around 60 years ago. When I say built, I don't mean he hired contractors and architects. I mean; with his 2 hands he and a couple other friends mortared the brick and cinder block, poured the cement floors, and put nail to wood to bring this dream to life.
The time has come to do this again. To put nail to wood and bring new dreams to life in this space. And I will need ya’ll’s help to do this, especially if you plan to stay for supper.
Over the next few months there will be calls to show up and help bring this to life. Now, more than ever, it’s important that we get clear on how community sufficiency can look. How do we want it to look? Supporting culture work and co-creating safe space to dream can be a part of how we continue to thrive through whatever comes next.
It feels impolite to close without a toast, so sit still while the frosted coupes arrive to your table, placed where dessert was just cleared. You’ll be drinking chilled local Honeysuckle infused Corn liquor (oak barrel aged), with sorghum syrup, frothy egg whites, satsuma mandarin zest and oak shavings halfway around the rim of the glass.
If you feel led, and inspired to co-create this dream space with us, you can be one of the first to donate a love offering to my Give Butter Campaign for Woodard’s Garage here. Anything you can give gets us a little closer, so thank you in advance for your contribution.
You can also scan this QR code to donate!
Special thank you to my co-conspirator and editor for this piece Tangina Stone. You can read and follow her brilliant writing on her Substack “Deeply, by Tangina Stone”.
Love this incredible vision🔥 And I’d love to photograph Ma Annaclyde Burt♥️