Food Lifestyle

On a Personal Note: Hanan Shabazz

By Emma Castleberry

When I spoke with Hanan Shabazz on one of our region’s first truly cold days this winter, the chef had just finished putting cornbread in the oven. “I started making mud pies as a little bitty girl,” she says of her history with cooking. “I had sisters and brothers and I always wanted to make sure they had something to eat. They didn’t like it, but they got mud pies.” She laughs.

Hanan Shabazz. Photo by Johnny Autry

Unlike some chefs, who are motivated by the food itself, Hanan is motivated by hungry people. That early inclination to make mud pies for her siblings has carried throughout her life, and in the 1970s, she owned and ran the Shabazz Restaurant on Eagle Street in Asheville. While Hanan loves to hear the “moans and groans of people whose stomachs have been empty and then I have filled them up,” she also believes in self-sufficiency. When she got tired of her seven grandsons always asking for food, she decided to teach them how to make it themselves. “I went to the Goodwill and found some cutting boards and some chef’s knives and I said, ‘Now everybody is going to learn how to do this,’” she remembers. “Now, they’re in this kitchen with me, cooking every day. Those that aren’t with me are in other restaurants all over Asheville and they are chefs. That makes me feel fantastic.”

Hanan is a crucial fixture at Asheville’s Southside Kitchen, where she cooks meals for people in need. “We make between 300 and 600 meals a day for people that are disabled, housing authority residents, people that have this terrible virus—all the people that need to have some good, wholesome food,” she says. Hanan had been teaching people to cook out of her home for many years when she learned about Southside Kitchen, a social enterprise project of the not-for-profit Green Opportunities, which trains, supports and connects marginalized communities to sustainable employment pathways. “I stopped by there one afternoon and met everybody and told them, ‘I understand that you guys need me in your kitchen and I need to be in your kitchen, so here I am,’” she says.

Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) recently recognized Hanan with the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award, named after a respected New Orleans restaurateur and entrepreneur. The award, supported by the Fertel Foundation, is meant to pay homage to “a relatively unsung hero or heroine, a foodways tradition bearer of note,” says the press release announcing Hanan’s win. “Most of the time when things of this nature happen,” says Hanan, “they always wait until you are gone to give you any awards or gratitude for the things you’ve learned. It makes me feel so good that somebody recognized that I strive each and every day to do some good in my neighborhood and that is one of the most important parts of my life.”

To see a documentary film about Hanan, visit SouthernFoodways.org/awards.

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