This is The Haul, where we follow the city’s top chefs and food experts as they forage for their pantry must-haves.
“Hey, Twin,” says Fernay McPherson, nodding to a dude walking his dog through the Fillmore Farmers Market. McPherson, a third-generation Fillmore resident, has known this guy and his twin brother since middle school at Ben Franklin (now called KIPP), over on Scott Street. “I never know if it’s Ronald or Ronelle, so I just call them Twin.”
Although her restaurant, Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement, opened just five months ago on Fillmore Street, causing a rosemary-fried-chicken fervor citywide, McPherson’s neighborhood roots are three generations deep.
The area, once touted as the “Harlem of the West,” is where her grandmother Lillie Bell and great-aunt Minnie moved from Texas, part of the Great Migration. These women taught McPherson how to cook. This is where she grew up, and her kids grew up, and now her grandkids, who attend the same preschool she did.
In other crucial ways, the neighborhood has changed. Once overflowing with art and jazz and multiple generations of Black families, it is now a mix of “for lease” signs and Michelin stars, and the Black population has dwindled to 10%. Even the Safeway — a stalwart on Webster, where McPherson used to hang after high school — is slated to shutter soon. (“Condos,” she says, eyes rolled.)
It’s 10 a.m. on a Saturday in August and Minnie Bell’s is launching a new lunch service in exactly one hour. Yet the chef is unruffled. Roaming the market, wearing sunglasses and black Crocs with socks (pattern: “chocolate and wine!”), she’s armed with a woven bag nabbed from friends at La Cocina, the incubator for low-income women entrepreneurs that helped her launch her first business, a food truck, in 2012.
Eventually, she landed a space at Emeryville’s Public Market. She gave that up last spring, after Mayor London Breed called her out of the blue and invited her to move Minnie Bell’s — as McPherson says — home. McPherson knows she’s lucky to have also had the support of the Dream Keeper Initiative, which has tried to bring Black-owned businesses back to the area.
She’s also lucky to be a chef with a Saturday farmers market right around the corner. If only, she says, the oyster mushrooms were available today. (She soaks them in a rosemary marinade, dredges them in flour, then deep-fries.) She’d also love to see Black farmers represented and wouldn’t mind if the market extended its hours beyond Saturdays. “We need another day of this market!” she says. By Tuesday, McPherson and her woven bag are ready for a refill.
Fernay’s shopping list:
Jacob’s Farm: fresh mint ($3/bundle)
McPherson holds a bouquet of fresh-picked mint to her nose, but no need, really — you can smell it across the double-wide stall. She’ll muddle it for Minnie Bell’s low-ABV cocktails, like the Summer Time, a cherry-lime concoction modeled after a mojito.
Medina Berry Farms: strawberries ($15/three baskets)
“Ooh, these will go perfectly with our cake tonight!” she says, popping a sweet beauty — better than anything you’d get at the store — into her mouth. By “cake,” McPherson means her version of strawberry shortcake: a house-made lemon scone topped with sliced berries.
Narci Organic Farms: Fresno chiles ($5/pint)
Plump, perky, fire-red. “Can I get everything you have left?” she asks the vendor. That’s 20 pounds worth of chiles. Inspired by Crystal, the classic New Orleans hot sauce, she’ll ferment the chiles for a week, blend them with vinegar and garlic, strain, and bottle. The result graced every table at the Blue Note Jazz Festival event McPherson recently catered — and, here’s hoping, will be sold at the restaurant too.
Narci Organic Farms: collard greens
“This isn’t kale!” she exclaims about the flat, leafy, green flaps mixed in with kale’s curly ones. “I’ve never see collards here before!” Good to know for next time. For now, she’s got plenty of collards back at Minnie Bell’s, which she braises in a veggie stock to serve as a popular side, joining the company of candied yams, mac ’n’ cheese, and cornbread.
Little Sky Bakery: cookie ($6)
McPherson passes a man hawking hummus samples for Little Sky Bakery. She knows what she wants: “One giant cookie that I do not need, please!” And that is what it is: a giant, no-nut, chocolate-chip cookie, big enough to share with her staff.
J&J Ramos Farms: watermelon ($5)
She points to a dark-striped watermelon the size of a bowling ball. It weighs in at around 4 pounds. Sunday night — after a full day at Minnie Bell’s, followed by a few hours of cooking for an annual back-to-school haircut fundraiser at Westside Cuts on Divisadero — she will sink into her couch, slice the melon in half, and eat it with a spoon.