On Wednesday, Tammy Paolino from the Courier-Post released an article on “Supper Club” that’s been in the works for a few months. I loved the article, and it got enough buzz on the website that they turned it into a beautiful long-form story with great pictures. I encourage you to go check it out. Joseph Russell, the “co-founder” of Supper Club, and I are hearing from a lot of folks, and it’s wonderful to see — certainly all are welcome, and it’s amazing to hear from so many people wanting to venture farther into Camden and try some amazing restaurants. But I wanted to take a moment on #foodiefriday to move beyond the discussion of why I love and enjoy Camden’s restaurants to some of the parallels with what I’ve seen in New Orleans, and the potential dangers of cultural appropriation. 

I’ve written about Supper Club before, but here are the basics. As I say in the article, I’m interested in supporting Camden for what it is, and bringing people to the city who want to support it for what it is. Too often development in the city depends on a castle mentality, building a wall between development and the rest of the city. I love Supper Club because it breaks down those walls and asks people to experience the city, not barricade themselves within it.

But things are never quite that simple. When Supper Club was first written up by Kevin Riordan, one of my best friends in the city asked me to remove him from the mailing list. His reason? That he didn’t think people getting together to eat food should be news. 

It was frustrating at the time, but I also identified with the sentiment. During my time living in New Orleans I watched the delicate dance of balancing the revival of local cultures, bars, and traditions with the dangers of cultural appropriation. 

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans saw an influx of young, idealistic newcomers who loved many aspects of the city’s culture. These newcomers were largely white, and their expendable income and inexhaustible energy helped revive some of New Orleans traditions. Second lines, the famous New Orleans funeral parades, were largely a Black tradition prior to the storm. Since, they’ve become more racially mixed, and accompany almost every prominent public event. Similarly, I fondly remember my first time visiting Tremé’s Candlelight Lounge. Every Wednesday the Tremé Brass Band would play in the tiny venue, lit by Christmas lights with red beans and rice on the stove. The influx of residents, dollars, and attention have breathed new life into the restaurants and bars that depend on second lines, and Candlelight has expanded. 

But the last time I went back to the Candlelight I also got a bit of a sense of the deep loss that can accompany this commercial success. The Candlelight was packed, but the small, cozy vibe of years past was changed. Tourists were crowding the stage and dancing. It was less possible to sit down and have a beer with a local and learn about the city, and more likely a PBR would be accidentally spilled on you by a hipster wearing a hat. Now, full disclosure, I’ve quite often been the hipster with the hat in these situations (though you won’t find me drinking PBR). But, in talking to friends and even in visiting myself, I still feel that loss.

I say all of this to acknowledge the loss that local communities feel when their local establishments are run-over by people who ultimately change what an institution (bar, parade, or even restaurant) feels like. It’s one of the reasons we (Supper Club) work both to reach out to restaurants before we arrive, but also to invite local residents. Such loss is real, and at the last Supper Club I saw a bit of it in the eyes of the man who couldn’t believe that he had to stand in a 20 minute line to get food at Reggae Grille, or that half of the options on the menu were gone because we had cleaned them out. His experience was different because of us.

There’s a deeper issue here too, one of power. Part of the complaints in New Orleans have to do with cultural appropriation — adopting culture by an outside group. There’s a lot to dive into here, but I’ll keep it simple. By appropriating culture, others are making money off of it. For example, in New Orleans, local Blacks have long made elaborate costumes to celebrate Mardi Gras, in part because they were excluded from white-only parades. After the storm, as Mardi Gras Indians received acclaim, photographers came to the city and sold pictures of these costumes.

This created a tricky phenomena that is often repeated in the cultural tourism world — those making costumes (or music) who were barely getting by — and a second class of middle-class professionals making money off of local culture. There’s some natural resentment about this. At the root of this are inequities. Often, because dollars are coming from outside the community, those in the best position to collect them are those with connections to outside community. This puts the connectors, or to a cynic, the middle men, in prime positions to benefit financially while local residents struggle to make ends meet.

The same logic is sometimes implicit in the logic of articles about things like the Supper Club. I really appreciated Tammy’s work to explain the story here, and how we see it as a say to support the city. But I’m often scared that these articles verge on “white people came to save Camden!” stories. So scared, in fact, that I often explicitly bring up the topic to reporters when contacted, and try to get a sense of where they are. Because within the “white people in Camden is news” paradigm, there’s an implicit acknowledgement of the power of outside money upon the city. We go to restaurants, in part, to support them. But that sets up a power dynamic that can be troubling. 

When I first sent my students to Camden restaurants, they experienced that power dynamic. They were quickly tabbed as Rutgers students, and restaurants often sent them back to campus with fliers and discount cards to hand out to their fellow students. Their business was needed, and as such, they were treated differently at the restaurants. 

I think about this with regards to Supper Club. The club is a way to support Camden for what it is, link incredible people throughout the region to amazing food in the city, and show some of Camden’s most authentic places off to people who might not otherwise see them (or residents who go often, but enjoy the company of the rest of us). That’s good. But Supper Club comes with concerns of power, gentrification, and potential loss for residents who have long frequented these restaurants. And it’s critical for newcomers to a community to acknowledge that and consider it.

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The next Supper Club is 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29 at Pho Tan Phat Noodle House, 3301 Westfield Ave., Camden. RSVP by email to Joseph Russell at radioaktiv@gmail.com.  

Tags: foodie friday