“The French chef has been tried in the south, but, except in a few rare instances, they have failed to satisfy the peculiar demands of the southern epicure or even of the tourist who, coming south, expects dishes peculiarly southern… The demand for capable colored cooks is greater than the supply.” – The Afro-American, December 1915
In June 1913, a squad of policemen were called into the Emerson Hotel for special duty. They stood watch as the French kitchen staff of the Emerson were informed that their services were no longer required. Head Chef Joseph Sarri and his staff muttered curses in French as Eli Jones, “grinning nervously and advancing rather cautiously, was led into the presence of the haughty Frenchman and introduced.” The chefs handed over their aprons and their kitchen tools to an all-black staff.
The Sun was rapturous. “Real old Maryland cooking has triumphed!” they wrote.
Emerson manager John J. Kincaid stated things more cynically. “We simply had to get negro cooks to keep our patronage,” he explained. “People were getting tired of coming to the South, the land of good, old-fashioned eating, to run across French cooking. When they come here and ask for ‘chicken, Maryland style,’ or for terrapin or oysters they want these dishes prepared by the cooks who know how. French cooks might do pretty well for New York — but for Baltimore, never.”
Chesapeake Room at the Emerson Hotel
Still, the Sun continued to gloat a week later, this time in poem form. In a parody of Poe’s “The Raven,” they wrote:
“Joseph Sarri, expert Frenchman,
with his band of Gallic henchmen,
‘got the can,’ while stalwart bluecoats guarded well the kitchen door.
‘Joe’ had served up Paris dishes,
but this did not meet the wishes
of the Emerson’s best patrons, visitors to Baltimore.
So the sons of Gaul departed
dignified, yet broken-hearted
and since then the dark-skinned Eli and his band have held the floor.”
Although the fetish for black cooks was reaching new heights at this time, Baltimore’s dining scene had depended heavily on African-Americans from the beginning.
Cooking and catering provided a rare opportunity for Baltimore’s black citizens to enjoy some of the benefits of the city’s culinary fame.
Caterer John R. Young had been serving the city’s well-to-do since before 1900, at the Elkridge Hunt Club, Filon’s restaurant at Light & Redwood (née German) Streets, and countless luncheons, weddings, and banquets. All of his advertisements mention his specialty – terrapin, but there are other accounts of dinners he catered which highlight his mutton, turkey, Chicken a la Maryland and Oysters a la Newberg.
1907 advertisement, Maryland Medical Journal
When Young died of pneumonia in 1920, the original Sun obituary reduced his lifelong accomplishments to the fact that “many white persons who had known and had enjoyed the meals he prepared were present” at his funeral.
A later eulogy did a little better. “He was a scientist, an artist, and an alchemist,” the Sun wrote. “It was John Young who first made a culinary poem of the diamond-back terrapin: and the chicken that came to John Young’s kitchen to be fried came out not as a martyr, but as one blessed among chickens.”
Young was born in Tappahannock, VA, and moved to Baltimore at age 17 and became a waiter. He was a head waiter at the Hotel Rennert before moving on to work at several of Baltimore’s elite clubs such as the Anthenaeum and the Elkridge Hunt Club.
Athenaeum Club, Charles & Franklin Streets, Baltimore, loc.gov
Eventually, he branched out to commence catering out of his home on Richmond Street (possibly now Read street.)
His reputation reached so far and wide that he was shipping diamondback terrapin to Chicago and New York. The latter Sun eulogy wrote that he was being mourned in Chicago, New York, and Baltimore and that “when the news gets to Paris and London he will be mourned there.”
Though the Sun attempted to honor Young by emphasizing how white funeral attendees “of place and position” mourned his passing for love of his cooking, we can hope that more than a few of them mourned him also as a friend.
Meanwhile, over at the Emerson, fickle management had a change of heart. In 1922 they summarily dismissed the black kitchen staff (though they kept the waitstaff.) The move was explained away by crediting “efficiency experts” and cost-saving measures. The hotel created segregated locker rooms for the kitchen staff. (In 1926 they hired Charles Bitterli – more about him on this post.)
Baltimore was still a city with a world-famous dining reputation, and there would be caterers who would follow in Young’s footsteps, gaining prosperity, independence, and fame and admiration not unlike the era of celebrity chefs we know of today….
(to be continued…)