Untitled Document
It’s a wonderful and rare experience to return
to a once-favorite restaurant after several years’ absence and find
it as good as ever. It’s akin to running into an old friend with whom
you’ve lost touch and quickly and easily slipping back into a
comfortable, close relationship. It’s even more wonderful and rare when the
restaurant has been closed for a while before being reopened by new owners.
I had such an experience recently at Boyd’s New Generation. I enjoyed many meals at the old Boyd’s. When
Annie and Albert Boyd retired, I was sad but understood that they were
ready for a break from the daily grind of running a restaurant. I remember
thinking at the time, “It’s awful to see it go. Surely they
could get somebody to take it over.” The first Saturday after hearing in 2002 that they had found someone to reopen
it, I made my way there — only to find it closed. Boyd’s,
having risen like a phoenix from the ashes, was now only open Monday
through Friday for lunch and until 7 p.m. on Fridays. Bummer. My schedule
is such that I rarely go out for lunch during the week. Saturday’s
the day when my husband and I tend to go out for lunch, when we’re
running errands. We told ourselves that we’d go there during the week
sometime, but somehow it never happened. Eventually we forgot about it, and
Boyd’s just slipped off our radar screen. It slipped back on when I saw that Boyd’s had
won the Illinois Times “Best of Springfield” 2006 award for Best Soul Food
[Boyd’s was also the winner in 2005]. It was time — and well
past time — to see what the “New Generation” was doing.
Walking back into Boyd’s felt like a homecoming.
Except for replacing the counter in front — from which Albert Boyd
had managed the dining room — with a few extra booths, everything
looked just the same. It was still spotlessly clean — so clean you
could eat off the floor, as my grandmother used to say. By myself, on that
first visit back, I (over)ordered several old favorites: Annie’s
gumbo, red beans and rice, greens, and cornbread. I figured I could take
home leftovers and send them with my husband for his lunch the next day. The gumbo and red beans and rice were every bit as
good as I remembered. The greens were good, too, although a bit sweet for
my taste. It’s not surprising that the gumbo was as outstanding as
ever: it turns out that Annie Boyd (now semiretired) still comes in to make
— or supervise the making of — the gumbo. The new owners have
faithfully used Annie’s recipes for most of the menu items,
supplemented with a few of their own specialties. It’s still a family affair, too. The new owners
are Tammy and Lewis (a.k.a. PeeWee) Calloway. Tammy is the Boyds’
niece. She and Lewis are from East St. Louis. Lewis had several successful
barbecued-snoot places there. Snoot is a flavorful crispy/chewy piece of
pork that’s cut from along the jaw. A specialty in the St. Louis/East
St. Louis area, it’s rarely seen elsewhere, especially in the North.
The Calloways planned to bring the pleasures of snoot to Chicago. A
stopover in Springfield, however, changed their plans and their lives
— and Chicago was destined to remain, at least for the time being
— a snootless desert. “People say we must’ve drunk the
water,” says Lewis, laughing, “but once we were here we
realized that this was the right place to be.”
Chicago’s loss was Springfield’s gain.
Lewis’ snoot expertise shows up on menu specials, and the Calloways
are successfully carrying on Annie and Albert’s grand tradition of
soulful Southern cooking. Places such as Boyd’s have long been
restaurant staples of the South, although these days, as with small locally
owned diners and restaurants everywhere, they’re being threatened by
the invasion of big fast-food chains. Among Boyd’s entrées are such
well-executed staples as ribs, fried chicken, catfish, and liver and
onions. Daily specials include smothered steak, pork chops, pot roast,
meatloaf, chicken casserole, and ham and beans. Friday’s specials
showcase Annie Boyd’s Louisiana heritage with jambalaya and an
excellent Cajun chicken with a spicy-but-not-hot flavorful brown roux
sauce. Vegetables and side dishes are not mere afterthoughts in
old-fashioned Southern restaurants, and Boyd’s keeps up that
tradition as well. In addition to those greens and cornbread, there are two
kinds of okra (stewed and fried) green beans, yams, black-eyed peas, and
more. Desserts are classic, too: sweet-potato pie, buttermilk pie, peach
cobbler, banana pudding, and old-fashioned pound cake.
Lewis Calloway is as gracious and genial a host as you
will ever encounter and a worthy successor to Albert Boyd. He says they
also do quite a bit of catering, including recent events for General
Assembly legislators to celebrate the new session. The menu for state Sen.
James Clayborn featured a down-home specialty that had probably never been
seen before at legislative feasts. “Just imagine,” said
Calloway, “chitlins at the Capitol!”
Sometime this year, the Calloways say, they’ll
open a drive-through window. When that happens, they’ll extend their
hours, although the drive-through will likely be open later than the
restaurant itself will. Will Boyd’s be open on Saturdays? I
couldn’t get Lewis to commit on that one. Guess I’ll just have
to rearrange my weekday schedule every so often. Boyd’s New Generation is located at 1831 S.
Grand Ave. E. Call 217-544-9866.
Send questions and comments to Julianne Glatz at
realcuisine@insightbb.com.
This article appears in Jan 25-31, 2007.
