“The bottom line is these chefs and cooks are responsible for food we still eat today in American culture, not just black culture.” — Martin Draluck, chef de cuisine at Hatchet Hall in LA
Hemings & Hercules explores American history through dishes like black-eyed pea pancakes inspired by Hercules Caesar, George Washington’s chefAs a young black girl growing up in the melting pot of Brooklyn, New York, my classmates often teased that I had “no real culture.” I couldn’t point directly to a country of origin the way they seemed to. I had no connection to extravagant carnivals and colorful flags.
Hatchet Hall, a 128-seat restaurant in the Culver City section of LA, has been telling stories through its wood-fired “Heritage American” food since it opened in 2015. In 2018, chef-owner Brian Dunsmoor created the supper club to explore the recipes and techniques of America’s earlier days. The name Fuss & Feathers is inspired by General Winfield Scott, a known food enthusiast nicknamed “Old Fuss and Feathers,” for his insistence on military formality.
When Jefferson was appointed minister to France in 1784, he took Hemings with him. Only 19 years old at the time, Hemings’s task was to master the French style of cooking. While in France, Hemings apprenticed with well-known French caterers and pastry chefs and became the chef de cuisine at Hôtel de Langeac, America’s first royal embassy. He was paid a wage of 24 pounds a week, comparable to free white servants at the time, and yet he was still considered property.
Draluck greets the room at the start and end of the dinner, but much of the night is moderated by a Hatchet Hall team member named Andre, who guides us through the meal employing oral storytelling with historical anecdotes along the way. As Andre tells the stories behind each dish, I feel a sense of pride, especially when he emphasizes words like “us” and “we,” as in “We brought this food here.”
The chicken roulade that makes up another course is based on a dish Hemings cooked for Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton as they came to the Compromise of 1790. As Charles A. Cerami writes in, Hemings served “Capon stuffed with Virginia ham and chestnut puree, artichoke bottoms and truffles with a bit of cream, white wine, and chicken stock,” along with “a calvados sauce made with the great apple brandy of Normandy.
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