David Thomas: The table remembers

On November 1, 1864, Maryland ended slavery by its own hand. The Emancipation Proclamation had passed over the state because it applied only to Confederate territory and Maryland was a Union state. It took a new state constitution, narrowly approved with the help of soldiers’ ballots, to free roughly 87,000 enslaved Marylanders. Some of the freed people celebrated that day. Many others had to build a life from nothing. 

I think about those people when I’m standing over a stove. 

I grew up in Baltimore watching my grandmother cook from scratch in a small kitchen. I learned there that quality ingredients are the foundation of great food. Over a career of more than 35 years, I have added a second lesson to the first: ingredients carry history too. I’ve said many times before that moving forward requires reaching back, and that you have to know your history before you can go on. 

Enslaved cooks in Maryland worked with what they were handed and what they could secretly grow. They had what the big house considered scraps, cuts of meat they could keep, a patch of garden, and the Chesapeake’s bounty of crabs, oysters, and fish. But what others dismissed as scraps were never scraps to them. Rooted in African culinary traditions, they understood the value of the whole animal, not just its prime cuts. Every part had purpose, and through generations of knowledge, skill, and resourcefulness, they transformed overlooked ingredients into dishes rich in flavor, nourishment, and cultural identity. Out of that came an entire cuisine, and it was a lasting form of resistance. They kept African ingredients and techniques alive: okra, black-eyed peas, benne seeds, corn, slow-simmered greens, and the sense of how heat and spice build a dish. They did this under a system designed to erase them. A pot of greens carried memory across an ocean and through generations when much else was forbidden. 

Cornmeal, often a basic plantation ration, became skillet cornbread, ashcakes, and hoecakes, sometimes sweetened with molasses, sorghum, or honey. Field peas, sweet potatoes, turnips, and pumpkins sustained families through colder months. November brought Chesapeake oysters, roasted over open fires or stewed. Catfish and perch could be coated in seasoned cornmeal and fried, while wild game supplemented meals when available. 

The recipes were rarely written down, since literacy was often outlawed. The knowledge lived in hands and eyes, and in the way a grandmother said, “You’ll know when it’s right.” Oral tradition made the kitchen a school and the meal a lesson. People’s memories had to preserve what they were not allowed to record, which is a kind of resistance too.

I know Emancipation Day does not complete the story. Freedom in 1864 meant legal liberty without land, wages, or protection. Formerly enslaved Marylanders cooked their way into the economy anyway. They became caterers, oyster shuckers, street vendors, and market sellers and built crabhouses. Baltimore’s Black cooks fed the city while the city undervalued them. 

I have spoken pointedly about this pattern. I have firsthand knowledge that many more people profit from what African Americans created in food than African Americans themselves do, even though Black cooks have been elevating food on this continent from the very beginning. A restaurant critic might call a dish new, but I hear an old story told without credit. 

That is why I pushed back on the idea of “elevating” soul food. This lesson was taught to me by Jessica B. Harris right before the opening of the former Ida B’s Table. For me, as much as the work is about pushing forward, it is about reaching back. The goal is to restore context to the plate, not to just dress it up. 

A statue is stone, and a textbook can be shelved. A meal is different because it gets inside you. Taste connects to memory more directly than almost any other sense, and a dish tied to a story makes that story hard to forget. 

For people denied archives, libraries, and monuments, the kitchen became the archive. Every recipe is a document, and every shared plate is a way of passing it on. I understand that when someone eats collards at my table and hears where the technique came from, they are receiving a record that has survived slavery, Jim Crow, and every attempt to flatten it. 

Seen this way, cooking is resistance in a quiet and stubborn form. To cook the food of your ancestors, name its origins, and refuse to let others claim it unchallenged is to say that this history is alive and has not been erased. It also reflects something about Baltimore. I want to leave the city better than I found it, and not only to elevate its food scene, but to reveal its conscience. 

Maryland has often treated Emancipation Day as a footnote, a date known to historians more than to the public. A chef can help change that simply by cooking. Each time a dish reaches a table with its story attached, the day gets another chance to be remembered. 

Some might say the work is only partly about the food. The rest is about who gets to tell the story and whether the story gets told truthfully. On November 1, 1864, thousands of Marylanders gained their freedom on paper. The generations after them kept that freedom alive in ways that were practical, daily, and delicious: a pot on the stove, a recipe handed down, a table set with care. 

That is the inheritance of a people, and it is why I keep setting the table. Each meal declares that our ancestors were here, that their knowledge mattered, and that their legacy survives. 

The table remembers. And so must we.

Chef David Thomas is an award-winning chef, Food Network’s “Chopped” Grand Champion, and co-founder of Baltimore-based H3irloom Food Group. With more than three decades of culinary experience, his work celebrates the rich history, cultural significance, and evolution of African American foodways. Through cooking, storytelling, and education, he is committed to preserving culinary traditions, reclaiming narratives, and honoring the people and communities whose contributions have shaped American cuisine.