Photograph by Hailey Bollinger
America’s reverence around collards often gets flattened into a simple origin story, but the history is more layered. Collards are sometimes mistakenly described as a food first cultivated during slavery. The plant itself dates back thousands of years to Eurasia and belongs to the same Brassica family as kale and cabbage. Culinary historian Michael Twitty notes in his blog, Afroculinaria, that the “first documentation available thus far” linking Southern Blacks with collards appears in 1781, when Continental Army Captain William Feltman traveled through Hanover County, Virginia, and observed that “The Negroes here raise great quantities of snaps and collerds [sic] they have no cabbages here.”
Enslaved people turned limited rations into year-round sustenance by growing collard patches of their own. Low and slow cooking with lard and fat meat tempered bitterness and stretched flavor through the pot. What began as survival endures as celebration on Sunday tables, at church gatherings, during holidays, and for some, a health remedy. (Grandmothers have been pouring broth from collards—also known as “pot liquor”—into baby bottles to quiet colic or soothe upset stomachs for generations.) That kind of care is why in Black kitchens greens are rarely just a side dish. Restaurants all over the city serve them, including Richie’s Chicken & Soul, and you can even get them as late night eats at The Night Kap.
- The Night Kap, 4301 Whetsel Ave., Madisonville, (513) 888-4001
- Richie’s Chicken & Soul, multiple locations
