Friday, December 26, 2003  
WXPort
Feedback
 Clubs TonightHot TixBand GuideMP3sBest Music PollSki GuideThe Best '03 
 By Restaurant | By Location | By Cuisine | On the Cheap | Noshing | Uncorked | Hot Links | Review Archive |  
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
New This Week
News and Features

Art
Astrology
Books
Dance
Food & Drink
Movies
Music
Television
Theater

Archives
Letters

Classifieds
Personals
Adult
Stuff at Night
The Providence Phoenix
The Portland Phoenix
FNX Radio Network

   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

United House of Prayer Kitchen
Good soul for sale, cheap
BY ROBERT NADEAU
United House of Prayer Kitchen
(617) 442-0105, (617) 445-3246
206 Seaver Street, Roxbury
Open daily, 11:30 a.m.–6 p.m.
No credit cards
No liquor
Free parking lot
Access down three steps from street level

This is not exactly a restaurant, but it is a remarkably pleasant, inexpensive, and convenient place to have a meal in a neighborhood with very few conventional restaurants. I reviewed the basement cafeteria in the old United House of Prayer for All People on Tremont Street, and can report that the new location, in the former Elma Lewis School (originally Temple Mishkan Tefila), is larger, brighter, and better than ever.

The ongoing rehab of this historic building is very impressive, preserving much of the exterior decoration and character while making it like new inside. The United House of Prayer was founded by Bishop Charles "Sweet Daddy" Grace, a Cape Verdean immigrant who was both hailed as a faith healer and criticized for his lavish lifestyle before his death in 1960. His legacy has been enduring, however, in a vibrant national network of churches with charismatic daily worship. Certainly there is nothing sectarian about the kitchen, other than two framed color photos of Bishop Grace and other dignitaries on the walls. The South End kitchen had a "pastor’s table," reserved daily for the minister and his guests, but this feature is now gone.

The cuisine is mostly soul food, but much of it is surprisingly healthful. Someone has decided that while the old-time religion is good enough, the old-time diet was too high in salt and fat. Salt, pepper, and a vinegar-based hot sauce are on most tables, and you may want them.

Dinners (with two side dishes) are priced from $6 to $8, and most are available as sandwiches for a few dollars less. Probably the least reformed entrée is ham hocks ($6); mine, at least, had relatively little meat and lots of enticing tendon and fat. The meat also retained some salt and an excellent flavor. The pork ribs ($5.50 sandwich/$7 dinner) are like many ribs in Boston, baked slowly in sauce until falling off the bone rather than traditionally barbecued. I don’t know how this started, but it has been popular in Boston’s African-American neighborhoods at least since the 1950s; this style is still available at places like Simco’s in Mattapan or Buffalo’s in Hyde Park (where the ribs are finished on the grill). The portion at United House of Prayer Kitchen is four large ribs with plenty of meat and a nice sauce that has hints of smoke and fire. Beef ribs ($8) were not available on my two visits, but presumably cater to a growing number of customers who have given up pork for religious or health reasons.

Fish dinners are served on Fridays, but the weekday mainstay is chicken ($6 leg quarter/$6.50 breast quarter): fried, broiled, baked, barbecued, or smothered. Interestingly, the lack of salt is most evident in the fried chicken, which is otherwise excellent — done but tender, lightly battered, not at all greasy. My favorite was the baked chicken, which had a little more seasoning. I also liked the gravy on the smothered chicken.

The liveliest side dish is the potato salad, but you have to mention it since it’s in a refrigerator case with the desserts. The other sides are on a steam table; they’re often overdone but wholesome. The macaroni and cheese is in a more-cheesy and less-creamy style. The sweet potatoes have an effective dose of cinnamon. The collards and black-eyed peas are rather plain without salt or fat, but are easily doctored with the hot sauce. Lima beans are good on their own. The cabbage is thoroughly boiled and fairly tasteless but digestible. The green beans get the same treatment, but overcooking suits green beans better.

Drinks are bottled sodas or water, free ice water, and coffee or tea. If anyone has room for dessert, there are lots of good ones. Sweet-potato pie ($1.75) is excellent, although the crust is just average. A slice of spice cake or carrot cake ($1.75) has the tooth-aching sweetness of Southern desserts, and I also liked the pineapple cake ($1.75), which is a moist white cake with a good pineapple filling. Peach cobbler ($1.75) can be heated to order. It, too, is very sweet and good, with a somewhat doughy crust.

Service at United House of Prayer Kitchen is self-help. One moves down a cafeteria line and requests items from an able crew of servers. I think it’s polite to bus one’s own tray at the conclusion of the meal. The atmosphere is quiet and non-intrusive — this is one place that isn’t set up to be loud, that doesn’t need the illusion of being a happening place. The joyful noise is upstairs in the sanctuary at evening services. On weekdays, there’s a very convenient parking lot. Entrances aren’t well marked, but new patrons can follow the other savvy diners through the right rear door and down to the basement cafeteria. As the renovations are completed, wheelchair access may improve.

Although I shouldn’t have to mention this, I will add that this reviewer and two all-white parties were welcomed without fuss, as has always been my experience in Boston’s African-American neighborhoods.

Can any reader add to my meager store of information about Tunis G. Campbell, a black abolitionist and AME Zion church elder who wrote the second cookbook published by an African-American, in 1848? He was at that time headwaiter at the Adams House Hotel in Boston, and may have stayed to participate in the fugitive-slave rescues of the 1850s. During the Civil War he was on the South Carolina Sea Islands, in charge of organizing freed slaves into armed militias and farming cooperatives. After the war he moved 15 miles south to three majority-black counties in Georgia and continued this work as elected justice of the peace and state senator. When the Ku Klux Klan began targeting black leaders in the late 1870s, his son, Tunis Campbell Jr., moved to Boston, and the elder Tunis Campbell died here in 1891.

I am especially interested in locating Campbell’s grave, tracing his descendants, and developing more information on his Boston years, during which he married and started a family. Of the half-dozen or so abolitionists who wrote cookbooks, he is the only one known to have played an active part in the Civil War and Reconstruction. This great American and pioneering food writer deserves to be better known.

Robert Nadeau signs and discusses his book, The American History Cookbook, at the Brookline Booksmith on September 25, at 7 p.m. He can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com


Issue Date: September 19 - 25, 2003
Back to the Food table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend







about the phoenix |  find the phoenix |  advertising info |  privacy policy |  the masthead |  feedback |  work for us

 © 2000 - 2003 Phoenix Media Communications Group