Lessons From Black Restaurant Week In Our Segregated Foodie Town

CHICAGO — Vanetta Roy refuses to quit. After talking to the Chicago entrepreneur, I became convinced that's one reason her self-built restaurant chain, Surf's Up, thrives under such terrible circumstances.

On Thursday, we got to talking by chance.

I scanned online menus in search of a Chicago Black Restaurant Week joint for a late lunch.

Roy's welcoming restaurant counter at 71st and Crandon had me at "Hennessy Wings."

Surf's Up manager Mallory Harris pitched me on the restaurant week special, the "7-Dollar Holla," a chicken and fish combo with fries for $7.22.

A masked woman, most certainly a regular, attempted to convince me the grilled shrimp was a must order.

Both ladies seemed disappointed but not surprised that I turned down their suggestions in favor of the chicken wings and shrimp combo slathered in homemade cognac sauce, served on a bed of delightfully thin fries.

Harris insisted that I try the fried biscuits. I did. Everyone should.

While I waited, Roy's husband, Mike McDowell, walked into the tiny dining room decorated with life-size portraits of the couple's late friends — Spencer Connor, a sharply dressed former employee with a megawatt smile, and Chicago street basketball legend Bryan Leach — that bookend a chalkboard menu of delights that can change every day based on what's available, and affordable, at wholesale food markets.

The photos — and a counter that's one of the few in South Shore that isn't covered in bulletproof glass — signal to visitors that Surf's Up is owned by people who care about the neighborhood and respect the people who made it special.

"I'm from South Side. My mother used to be an accountant at South Shore Bank. I know how South Shore used to be. It used to be like Hyde Park. Busy," McDowell said. "I see South Shore coming back like Hyde Park."

Just then, my order was served. It was love at first bite, a crisp sweetness tangled in a subtle kiss of cognac and citrus that tastes like summer.

Pandemic supply chain troubles have caused the price of chicken wings, for instance, to nearly double. Catfish fillets jumped from $57 to $130. And a $9 sack of potatoes now sells for $34.

Over speakerphone, McDowell introduced me to his wife, who was in Atlanta researching franchise possibilities.

Roy is a Chicago Public Schools special education teacher on a leave of absence while tending to the restaurant chain. Her brother, Eric Roy, launched Surf's Up in Hillside. It didn't last. A second try on Chicago's West Side met a similar fate. Vanetta Roy didn't want to give up. The menu, the kind of stuff her grandmother used to make, was too good not to keep trying.

Almost eight years ago, McDowell and Roy rented the storefront on 71st Street. Since then, Surf's Up has multiplied to 11 other franchised locations in the city, suburbs and a store in Alabama, Roy said in our telephone chat.

It hasn't been easy. Not that many people pay attention most of the year, she said.

"Chicago Black Restaurant Week is supper important because we don't get the media, the marketing that white restaurants do. For one, we don't have the money. Banks aren't giving us loans. Marketing is extremely expensive. Most small, Black-owned restaurants don't have money for those things, and we don't get regular media attention. Unfortunately, we're not looked at the same. We're overlooked," Roy said.

"It's like we don't exist until Chicago Black Restaurant Week and Juneteenth. Those are the only two times a year that Black restaurants matter or exist. During those times, we get a little more business. … But this restaurant week hasn't been as impactful, so far. Business has been extremely slow. At this point, a lot of people have been out of work. … It's a terrible time for the restaurant industry. … Supporting us has to be more than twice a year. Supporting us has to be with things that will help us stay open."

Since the dawn of the coronavirus crisis, that kind of support has been hard to come by, Roy said.

Despite having good credit and six checking accounts with Chase, the bank denied her a business credit card. Chase also initially turned down her application for federal paycheck protection loans because they could not verify Surf's Up has a business checking account, she said.

"I had to go to the branch and point out that my business checking account is with Chase. What that told me was this is happening to a lot of Black businesses. If that wasn't racial profiling, what is?" Roy said. "They approved my PPP the next day, on a Saturday. … This is what we're up against."

Even some grant programs that aim to bolster small businesses in neglected minority neighborhoods, such as South Shore, are out of reach because they require owners to have matching funds, the Surf's Up owner said.

"The mayor says they have this grant or that grant. But they make it impossible for most of us to even get those. Take Neighborhood Opportunity Funds. They're going to offer us $250,000 in grant money. It sounds good until you get the facts about it, how you've got to have $250,000 to get it," Roy said. "If I had $250,000, I wouldn't need to apply for your grant."

Last year, Roy learned the struggles of Black-owned restaurants aren't limited to underserved neighborhoods. She opened a Surf's Up location in the Gold Coast, one of the richest ZIP codes in Chicago, in an $8,500-a-month storefront on Division Street to foodie media fanfare.

"I had the police called on me so many times. The Fire Department said I was accused of selling alcohol illegally. City of Chicago inspectors came two times. They said they were so sorry that I had to go through this," Roy said.

One regular customer left a voicemail saying she loved Surf's Up's food but complained that "Africans" hanging outside eating and socializing was "not a good thing for our neighborhood." Another white customer who was unhappy that Surf's Up closed before accepting an online order called Roy a "Black b—-" and the N-word," Roy said.

"There was no way I was going to pay $8,500 a month to be talked to like that. … That solidified it for me."

When Roy shut down Surf's Up's Old Town location, the move didn't even garner a foodie-media footnote. But no matter the trouble — pandemic lockdowns, denied loans, unattainable grant money, an unwelcoming neighborhood on the rich side of town, or the skyrocketing price of seafood, chicken and potatoes, Roy keeps going forward.

"The alternative is you quit, and that's not for me. I feel like the potential [for Surf's Up] is there. I want to be successful. I'm going to be successful," she said. "Being a Black woman, I'm not going to allow those handicaps and roadblocks to stop me. Otherwise, I would never have anything in life. If I'm not wanted, I don't have to be there."

Roy said that's why she was in Atlanta on Thursday during Chicago Black Restaurant Week.

"I'm going to open a restaurant in Atlanta. The demographics are different. The city is 50 percent black. I've seen the support from the mayor and the community in Atlanta is different from Chicago, which is so very segregated," she said during our telephone chat. "We don't get support from [City Hall], from the community. We don't get the media. We don't get the banks. We don't get anything in Chicago."

I'm grateful that Venetta Roy won't let any of that that stop her.

Get yourself a taste of Surf's Up Hennessy wings and shrimp, and you'll know what I mean.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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