“Anybody waited on you yet, baby?” asks a friendly waitress as a newcomer decides between chicken and dumplings or ham hocks. The question of sides is brought up, as if that will affect the main course selection. The answer is a rapid-fire listing of the comfort classics: “We got candied sweets, we got collards, we got corn…” A few tables away someone asks about peach cobbler. “Miss Boo,” the waitress shouts, craning her head in the general direction of the kitchen. “We got any cobbler left?” A muffled “yes” is heard from beyond the steam table, and smiles light up all around the dining room.
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The tiny, 12-table establishment shares a common wall with Pat’s Hand Car Wash on an unremarkable stretch of South Vincennes, next to a row of small bungalows and across the street from the railroad tracks. For nearly three years, Willetta “Boo” Tatum and her husband have been building the tiny Morgan Park space into a soul food haven. Block-glass windows obscure the view, but the refracted light illuminates black-and-white-checkered tablecloths and posters of African-American art and sports legends. A giant color TV in one corner is constantly on, giving you the feeling you’re in someone’s home.
Tatum spent more than 20 years working–as a shift manager for LaSalle Bank after she quit data processing–before she realized she wanted to do something that truly made her happy. In 1993 she enrolled in the culinary arts program at the Dawson Skill Center at 39th and State. She moved on to work at Flying Food Fare at Midway Airport, then became head cook for the Chicago Board of Education. “I had always worked for someone else,” she says. “I thought, why not do all of this hard work for me?”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Andre J. Jackson.
