Detroit Soul is an indwelling spirit made clear in the nourishment of love.

Our grandmothers bequeathed us the practice of feeding our extensive family as they, our mother, and our other female relatives convened in the kitchen and around the grill during our annual family reunions in Alabama for so many Julys. They infused the food that started as the meat scraps from slavemasters’ slaughterhouses–along with seeds cultivated from Indigenous people and their lands and smuggled from African nations through enslaved women’s intricate braiding–with cooking traditions and spices synthesized from Indigenous, African, Caribbean, and Western European cultures. These women got up early and gave thanks before fueling us children with blessed 7AM breakfasts and high-noon lunches. In the meantime, they fried, marinated, baked, broiled, boiled, and barbecued love into every dinner morsel we savored and shared over laughter and recollections.

Those memories traveled back with us to Detroit. As we matured, so did our abiding affection for the fare of our foreparents. We cultivated that love and our culinary skills through the practice of catering for our families, be they of birth, the church, or the neighborhood. Our practice of setting food before our communities became–by brick, by mortar, by passion, and by faith–Detroit Soul in 2015.

Thanks to the love and faith that our communities have reciprocated since we have opened our doors, we will soon offer a place in the Jefferson/Chalmers neighborhood where all who enter will have a place to sit and commune over the food that nourishes our bodies and edifies our souls!