AC Reeves has this grand vision for her adopted hometown of Selma, the Queen City of Alabama’s Black Belt and sacred battleground of the Civil Rights Movement.
If she can just get everybody to sit down together over a plate of homecooked food, Reeves believes, they won’t be able to resist Selma’s charms.
“My goal is, if we can catch people long enough, they will see us and hear us and fall in love with us, and when they do, I feel like Selma will heal,” she says. “And when Selma heals, she will change the world again.”
To that end, Reeves, a self-professed “pathological do-gooder,” has launched what she calls the 100 Plates Culinary Arts Installation, a weekday lunch series that she hosts in the old Woolworth’s department store building that is now home to her 5 & Dime art studio on Broad Street, just a couple of blocks from Selma’s historic Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Every month through the end of the year, she is inviting a different guest chef to Selma to prepare plate lunches for up to 100 guests a day at the 5 & Dime.
“100 plates is the ideal,” Reeves says. “I love that number 100. But it’s been basically about 50 plates (so far). We’ve had more, but the tourists haven’t quite found us yet.
“I do think this summer, it will probably build up to that, but it’s not going to be more than 100 because this is not a restaurant,” she adds. “This is an art installation.”
The lunches, which are served Mondays through Thursdays, are $20 each, plus tax, and they include a drink, dessert and “just a really good vibe,” Reeves says.
Since the idea is to get people to sit and visit, Reeves at first frowned on offering takeout orders but has since softened her stance.
“I used to really be (a jerk) about takeout because it defeats the whole purpose, right?” she says. “I was really trying to get people to sit together. But I’ve lightened up about that because the main thing is I don’t want my chefs to lose money.”
The menu -- which the chefs post on a chalkboard on the sidewalk outside the 5 & Dime and which Reeves shares on her Facebook page -- changes daily but is limited to one entrée with a side and a dessert each day.
More stories from the Black Belt by Bob Carlton
One of the 100 Plates lunches at the 5 & Dime in Selma came with a chicken salad croissant, a garden salad, a chocolate chip walnut cookie and a glass of pressed strawberry lemonade.(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
One idea leads to another
The chef-in-residence series grew out of a two-year art installation project that Reeves began when she opened her art studio in 2021.
Each month, she invited a different artist to paint a front window at the 5 & Dime and to compose a “Love Letter to Selma” to display on the window next to it. Then, at the end of that month, she hosted a community event to celebrate the artists and their artwork.
Montgomery artist Kay Sasser Jacoby, a close friend, painted the first and final window displays.
“I needed something to energize the space, and I didn’t have enough energy to do it myself,” Reeves recalls. “So I let (the artists) take over the whole space.
“Kay thinks I’m kind of feisty and I get really mad at people, but the data shows that I only got crossways with two out of the 25 (artists),” she adds, laughing.
After the window installation project ended last fall, Reeves had the inspiration for the 100 Plates lunch series, which began to come together after she bought some kitchen equipment from a catering company in Camden that went out of business.
Once she had the kitchen all she needed were the chefs to give it life.
“The chef-in-residence (idea) became the thing,” she says. “My hope with this one is the chefs will see there’s an opportunity and figure out a place that they could land here.”
Reeves also owns the Woolworth Lofts above the 5 & Dime, and as an incentive, she lets the guest chefs stay in one of the lofts for free during the month they are in residence.
“There’s kind of a yummy vibe up there,” she says. “It’s a special little place, and so far, everybody’s really loved it.”
AC Reeves, right, who owns the 5 & Dime art studio in Selma, sits with chef-in-residence Alanna Dennis of Alanna's Gourmet in Montgomery. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
Meet the chefs
The first chef-in-residence, Erica Allen, grew up in Selma but now lives in Jersey City, N.J., where she and her husband, Will Messmer, own a butcher shop and deli called Darke Pines.
The next guest chef was another Selma native, Emily Sherrer, who interned for James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Hastings at Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham while earning her culinary arts degree at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I.
Alanna Dennis, a private chef who owns Alanna’s Gourmet catering company in Montgomery, has been the chef-in-residence for March.
During her residency at the 5 & Dime, Dennis and her mother, Janice Dennis, have prepared such inspired dishes as lentil Bolognese over super greens pasta and Cajun salmon croquettes with stoneground grits, as well as old favorites such as chicken pot pie and red beans and rice.
“It’s been a good experience,” Alanna Dennis says. “I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to meet, and I’ve gotten to reconnect with some people that I already knew but hadn’t seen in a while. I’ve gotten good exposure and made some new friends and hopefully we’ll get some new business.”
Future chefs-in-residence include Robert Lynn from Roots & Revelry in Birmingham, Karen Preuss from Fennel & Figs in Montgomery, and Alp Yeager of Ruan Thai in Greensboro.
“I don’t even have all my chefs yet, but they’ll fall into place,” Reeves says. “This is all on faith.”
The 100 Plates lunches continue through the end of the year, and after that, it’s on to something new for Reeves.
“This has a time period,” she says. “Dec. 31, it is over. I’ll figure something else out.”
This chalkboard message inside the front door of the 5 & Dime reminds guests to "engage with one another with dignity, integrity, kindness, humor, empathy and especially love."(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
A gathering spot
In the meantime, word is starting to get around about the hip little art studio with the cool, inviting atmosphere and the hot, fresh lunches.
David Cheatham and his wife, Eleanor, who moved here from Atlanta during the COVID-19 pandemic, say they eat at the 5 & Dime at least twice a week.
Eleanor grew up in Selma and remembers perusing the aisles of the old Woolworth’s department store when she was a little girl.
Now, all these years later, the 5 & Dime is her and her husband’s new favorite place.
“We kind of hang out down here,” David Cheatham says. “We’ll finish lunch and just walk around and talk to people. It’s got that small-town feel.
“AC has done an amazing job,” he adds. “She’s got the energy of like 10 average people. I get tired just watching her run around.”
Selma resident Ann Armstrong -- who is here having lunch with Averee Hicks, a longtime Selma friend who now lives in the Birmingham suburb of Homewood -- is a regular at the 5 & Dime, too.
She comes for the food and stays for the fellowship.
“One of (Reeves’) ideas was to have people come together, and it really has done that,” Armstrong says. “I’ve seen some people I hadn’t seen in a while, and we just all sit together. It’s doing what she set out to do, which is to bring people together.”
Besides the hometown folks, the 100 Plates lunches have attracted visitors from Birmingham, Montgomery and all around the Black Belt, Reeves says, along with tourists from Boston, New York and Atlanta who have come to town to visit Selma’s historic civil rights sites.
And just as Reeves had hoped, some of them are discovering they are more alike than they ever knew, she says.
“Another really important thing for this space is, we don’t have to change anybody’s mind on anything,” she says. “We don’t have to talk about any hard things. We’re just coming together and sharing space.
“And if we can only talk about brownies, let’s start there,” Reeves adds. “Do you like the crispy part or do you like the doughy part? Let’s start there. And then we find out that we have more in common.”
Guest chef Alanna Dennis, left, of Alanna's Gourmet prepares lunch with her mother, Janice Dennis, during her chef-in-residency at the 5 & Dime.(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
Growing to love Selma
The irony that she has become one of Selma’s biggest ambassadors is not lost on Reeves, who grew up in Atlanta and New Jersey before she reluctantly came here with her husband, Selma native Allen Reeves, and their two young girls in the summer of 1997.
The couple met as undergraduates at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., and after living in Mobile and Oxford, Miss., they moved to Allen’s hometown so he could practice law with his father.
AC – short for Anne Catharine – did not want to be here and did not mind letting everybody know.
“I had a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old, and I was very mad about moving,” Reeves recalls. “I mean, I came with the absolute worst attitude but quickly fell in love with this amazing community.”
Now, she’s on a mission to let the world know just how amazing it is.
And she’s doing it one plate at a time.
The 5 & Dime is at 201 Broad St. in Selma, Ala. Hours for the 100 Plates lunch series are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays through Dec. 31. For more information, go here.
