Skip to main content

Food and Community

 


I can’t remember when I first started hearing people rave about R. House, the food hall in Baltimore created from a building that once housed the Anderson Automotive showroom. I do remember what they talked about: the delicious and out of the ordinary food, the variety of vendors, the flexibility of eating there, the convenience of having an in-house bar to pick up a drink to go with your meal. It was a whole new concept in the restaurant business for Baltimore.

That’s why I was so excited when work was kicked off right here in Howard County for the Common Kitchen, which is in many ways a hometown version of R. House. I particularly enjoy the Common Kitchen for its emphasis on being a part of the local community. Whether inviting high school groups to perform or hosting a local podcast, the folks at the Common Kitchen (and Clarksville Commons as a whole) have made their venue more than a place to pick up a bite to eat. I miss the days when my daily commute took me right by there and when one thought nothing of popping in casually to any local establishment. 

I look forward to a return of those days.

When I read Jeremy Dommu’s piece in The Merriweather Post about The Third - - a combination of café, retail outlet, coworking space, and business incubator - - it struck me that this new venture has at its roots a combination of the R. House food hall concept and the Common Kitchen community connections theme. Creator Laura Bacon starts on that framework and envisions so much more, describing a venue which functions not only by selling to the public but by fostering the work of entrepreneurial women of color. Take the time to read Dommu’s piece where he decribes this in more detail. You can visit their website, too.

I was interested to see a similar (though not identical) concept announced in the Baltimore Business Journal:

With 'Our Time' incubator, two Baltimore chefs look to support women of color starting culinary ventures, Amanda Yeager

Baltimore chefs Catina Smith and Kiah Gibian are working together to create: 

...Our Time, a new incubator in the Old Goucher neighborhood of Baltimore that will offer rentable commercial kitchen space, a food truck, take-out window and more for women of color who are hoping to start a culinary venture.

This last story is a tad more personal with me because I worked with Ms. Gibian in a school job a few years back when she was laying her plans for a future food truck business. Those plans eventually became Wilde Thyme.   It’s exciting to see her evolution from food truck entrepreneur to partner in helping new businesses get off the ground. I look forward to seeing how this progresses.

All of these ventures are focused around food. None of them would be possible if the restaurant business/food service industry models were completely determined by the same old “table service vs. drive through carry out” binary. All of them are enhanced by bringing people together and fostering community.

You can see why I’m more than a little invested in their success. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...
1 comment
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more