Nancy Littlehales says her parents entertained at home, at their clubs, or at hotels. She was dining at the Allies' Inn, which she remembers as an elegant buffet-style place with wonderful food, across from the Corcoran, when she heard that Franklin D. Roosevelt had died. It was a big event when L'Espionage opened at the edge of Georgetown with a doorman in a black cape and a showpiece bidet in the ladies room. Southern cooking is now preserved largely in the homes and churches of Southerners and African-Americans and in a few restaurants that have carved out Southern or soul food as their niches. That makes it hard to stay traditionally Southern yet allow for innovation.
People know what they want Southern food to taste like and look like.
Half the people who order chicken and dumplings have never had chicken and dumplings, but they know what they want chicken and dumplings to be. She wanted them hard. Renshaw, himself an African-American, obliged. When Jeff Buben tried to take biscuits off the menu at dinner and do a potato-dill roll instead, the innovation lasted only one day. We realized we had to put the biscuits back on or we were out of business.