If the name of this restaurant sounds earnest, you’re absolutely right. Chef-owner Erick Williams and his chef de cuisine, Damarr Brown, couldn’t be more purposeful about this Southern heritage restaurant — its menu steeped in tradition while going in new directions, its service built on a culture of hospitality and kindness, and its mission of paying tribute to their forebears. Here’s the thing: You can feel it. You can taste it. It may sound odd to say a plate of chicken gizzards and gravy over dirty rice tastes poignant, but it does. The ingredients aren’t fancy, so you focus on the complex, rounded seasoning, which tastes of a mother’s or grandmother’s hand, a connection from one generation to the next. The simple roast chicken is a treasure, prepared with such care to the moist meat, crisp skin, rendered fat. The skillet cornbread, served with house-churned butter and local honey, tastes like you’ve been invited to someone’s home kitchen table, which, in a way, you have.
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