Social media food critic Keith Lee says he arrived in Atlanta, GA, to do what his millions of followers expect from him, which is to eat good food. What he didn’t anticipate was for his experiences to go viral and reignite a conversation that food patrons have been having for years following an uptick in Black-owned restaurants enforcing rules and practices that don’t always feel customer-friendly. Senior editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Michael B. Jordan, joins Panama Jackson to discuss the fallout of Lee’s visit and debate whether it’s time for the restaurant culture to change.
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Panama Jackson: [00:00:00] You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network, Black Culture Amplified. What’s going on everybody? Welcome to Dear Culture, the podcast for, by and about the culture. And today we have a good show for you. Guaranteed. I am joined by a good friend of mine who is a part of the Atlanta food scene.
He’s a part of all things in Atlanta. We’re going to get to that. But he’s somebody who is a part of the Atlanta food scene. Because the one thing we are all talking about right now, whether we want to or not, is Keith Lee and what happened in Atlanta. My man shows up and all of a sudden he, he crushed the buildings.
So in order to have this conversation, I had to invite my homie, Mike Jordan, who is currently the Senior Editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, leading the Black culture team, which is like a dream job of all dream jobs. And so like leading the Black culture team, I don’t even know what that means, but that sounds like something all of us who write about Blackness and want to be able to do. Uh, well known in the Atlanta community and [00:01:00] beyond for his roles… uh, talking about Black culture. I know you from writing about hip hop, writing about food, just writing about culture and all those things. But you’re also a food writer, critic.
You were a James Beard finalist for your work in Atlanta Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. So you are Ocho Cinco, don’t worry, he’s qualified. He’s qualified to have this conversation. You know what I’m saying? How you doing, brother? And welcome to Dear Culture.
Michael B. Jordan: Man, Panama, thank you. Like, true homies.
Like, we are, we are absolute literal homies if you look up the dictionary. We are, so I’m just, uh, feel honored that I have friends who have amazing podcasts at theGrio and just everything you’ve done throughout your career. So, thank you for having me on. I’m doing well, man. I’m, I’m, I’m doing well. I’m watching the world burn around me as I’m, you know, in Atlanta and I’m out of town right now probably to escape the flames, but you know, you can’t Keith Lee is the new General Sherman.
So, you know, let’s go. I mean, if we’re going to put the fire out or maybe as [00:02:00] they scorch ground to like replant things either way, the fire is real. So I’m good, but Atlanta is, eh, we’ll see. I don’t know.
Panama Jackson: I love the idea of Keith Lee as General Sherman for those that do not know history, General Sherman burned down Atlanta, uh, for the union.
He took it out, uh, took it out of his misery, so to speak after the Civil War. And, uh, General Sherman is a famous figure in Atlanta lore. Let me just tell you, everybody in Atlanta knows who General Sherman is. But before, before we get to the burning, for those who don’t know, like, Keith Lee is a former MMA, like, featherweight fighter, who, from, originally from Detroit, moves to Vegas, uh, and I read this interview where he was talking about why he even started doing these reviews. He was nervous behind the camera when he had to do interviews and he started doing these and he started doing these making these videos to try to get more comfortable behind the camera.
So it’s really funny like this is really just like practice for him and he’s reviewing food and [00:03:00] all of a sudden he blows up as a food critic. Um, you know, there’s a slow burn, but it, it, it became really huge over time. So he’s a regular dude. He’ll say that to you who goes to eat food. He pays for his food.
He does it in a very monotone, basically like guru from gangstar, the way he delivers things, which might be a reference that goes over the head of anybody under, I don’t know–
Michael B. Jordan: I got it. That’s right.
Panama Jackson: I know you got, I know, you know, but you are intimately involved with the food scene in Atlanta, right?
You’ve restaurants. I used to, I watch you talk about places. You’re a reason why I know of the Bando in Atlanta. You wrote a review about the Bando. And then I was like, this is in my neighborhood in Atlanta. I want to go there whenever I visit, but sometimes it’s open. Sometimes it ain’t, they comment on these things and this gets into the.
This kind of gets to the heart of what Keith Lee shows up in Atlanta and exposes.
Keith Lee: So we went to another place. We went to the Toast on Lenox. They said it was a two and a half hour wait time. We said, okay, we’re going to go somewhere else. [00:04:00] While we walked out, the entire staff walked out behind us. They attempted to implore us to stay and said that we can sit down immediately. Again, I’m not the target audience for that.
Panama Jackson: So let’s start at the, let’s start at the top though. How would you describe the food scene in Atlanta?
Michael B. Jordan: The food scene in Atlanta is pretty much anything goes because Atlanta is a city where there’s food anywhere you go. And I think that that’s important for people to understand, especially when we have visitors coming in.
Um, and just to level set again, I’m not from Atlanta. I moved to Atlanta in 1995 to attend Morehouse, but I’m from Huntsville, Alabama, and I look at Atlanta somewhat from an inside outsider’s perspective. And one of the first things anybody ever wants to do when they cross, uh, in over 285 to be inside the perimeter of Atlanta, or they fly in through Hartsfield Jackson, is like, where are we eating?
And usually people have an idea of where they want to [00:05:00] go based on these big… cutural phenomenons that Atlanta has birthed as places to eat. One of them is Magic City. So again, that tells you immediately what type of dining city we are. Is that there are many people who obviously would want to go to this world famous strip club in downtown Atlanta for reasons that have nothing to do with chicken wings.
And there are also just as many people who, if they don’t just want to go for the chicken wings, they want wings and the lapdance at the same time. But they’re gonna get the wings, but Magic City, I think, is a great, uh, example of what type of place Atlanta is in dining. You can’t go to a strip club, you can’t go to a gas station, you can’t go to several retail stores without finding something to eat.
Food is just everywhere in Atlanta, and I think that has contributed to the sort of atmosphere we have where we may need to decide how [00:06:00] critical we want to be about our dining offerings to not just people who live here, but especially people who travel in and out and carry the legend of Atlanta with them.
Panama Jackson: Keith Lee shows up. He’s on his family tour. They going around places and they doing stuff. And he starts talking about places in Atlanta and all of a sudden, boom, it’s like he just set off a bomb. Why do you think? Like, was this just a conversation waiting to happen? Like, why do you think that all of a sudden, this individual, uh, Keith Lee, shows up into Atlanta and sets off this firestorm that is still raging, by the way, because I actually thought based on the social media cycles, it would have died by now, but it’s continuing, it’s still going, like people are still weighing in on it. So why do you think Keith Lee has been able to come into Atlanta and basically light the city on fire around food and its food culture?
Michael B. Jordan: People have known that there are some issues with Atlanta’s dining culture for a [00:07:00] while.
There has sort of been this ongoing situation where I watched prices rise, I watched the experience sort of plateau of what we should expect from a certain restaurant experience, and also this sort of quiet sense of almost like a stop snitching thing that developed among us because you don’t want to be critical of your own people, even when we know we may have some things that we could do a little better on. That conversation has sort of been fading as more opportunities to have your restaurant dream or to open up a Black brunch place, which is a massive phenomenon in Atlanta. Black brunch is a phenomenon in many cities, but in Atlanta it is massive and even Keith Lee spoke to the fact that he wasn’t aware that in Atlanta people come prepared to sit for hours and wait on their place to go and get a table.
And that’s part of the culture. [00:08:00] There has quietly been an understanding that Atlanta’s dining scene leaves a little bit that could be improved upon and I watched that because people were coming in from out of town. They were going to certain restaurants that have big, you know brand recognition and are sort of like the places where if I come to Atlanta if I don’t go there I’m not really with the culture. But the problem is I was hearing people afterwards talk about that and my interest in being a local journalist who covers Atlanta, as you said, on all places, but certainly food.
And I started to notice that people were leaving with too polite of a demeanor to say without being prodded that they didn’t have the experience that they hoped to have. And that started to make me worried because I didn’t realize they were leaving Atlanta and maybe saying like, you know, Atlanta’s not serious.
And I’ve heard that from chefs of really big importance, Black chefs, you know, I won’t call out names, but some really prominent Black chefs across the country have come to [00:09:00] Atlanta and said, uh, yeah, you know, y’all, y’all ain’t serious down there. So when I started to notice that, I was like, this is going to come up and be an issue.
And I think the Keith Lee part of it is that sometimes it takes a true outsider because I tell everybody, if Keith Lee was just wrong and he didn’t really have a point that people agreed with, no one would have cared.
Panama Jackson: Keith Lee comes to Atlanta. He goes to restaurants and he immediately experiences… interesting rules for places, right? Like rules like, uh, we don’t do takeout orders, we don’t do these things and he, and, and, you know, every restaurant is entitled to have rules for how they serve their food, whatever, and it is our decision about whether or not we’re gonna show up to these things. Like what in the hell is up with all these rules?
Cause I think in Atlanta, what I’ve noticed is like the are you open today or are you not open today? Cardi B mentioned this, right? Like when you try to go to places like It’s Tuesday, but you ain’t open, but you was open last week on Tuesday.
Cardi B: Atlanta restaurants, right? They be closed on the most random shits.
Like, it’s like, you look at a rest you go looking for a restaurant on [00:10:00] Google, and it’s like, oh, this shit look good. Oh, they closed .What do you mean? Y’all niggas is closed Monday through Wednesday. Or they’ll just have the most random days closed.
Panama Jackson: You know, I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water, but you do get stuff like that. That does make it hard for people to take your restaurant and your space serious. So then when somebody who is an out of towner shows up and then they highlight that and then you get mad about it, it’s like, but bro. I’m here and I’m trying to eat your food and I can’t like Cardi jokingly said these restaurants don’t want to make any money. So, you know, like what is it? Are they just going too far with these things? Like what do you think contributes to that?
Michael B. Jordan: There are some entrepreneurs who got into the restaurant business because there was such a big money grab and they have seen that people will allow certain levels of, you know, what I consider to be lower standards of service and, and lower availability of things that you could get anywhere else because the people have allowed that to happen. And I think when you look at, you know, restaurants saying, oh, we’re not going to do [00:11:00] takeout or we’re not going to do this, we’re not going to do that. I mean. One of the, one of the places where you’ve seen this big boom is again, Black brunch. Black brunch in Atlanta, one of the really interesting things about it, when I reported on this for Eater, it was that there was, there are so many people who got into this scene who were hairdressers, and who were real estate agents, and who were in trucking, and who were in all these other things. Things to where, you know, they were making money, they were getting in how they live, so to speak, and doing well enough to be investors in their own dream. But they weren’t restaurateurs. So to them, that whole idea of, well, what do I owe you? What level of service you provide, like, nah, we’re selling styrofoam plates of chicken, you know, or we have a plate, but we might give you plastic fork and spoon. Are you going to eat it? Oh, you eating it? Cool. We’re gonna keep giving you this then because you have established that as a baseline, this is what you will tolerate. So that is part of it. There’s a big discussion to be had about what value do we think we bring, not just in [00:12:00] our dollars, which is the big conversation.
Money is a major issue, but in just the fact of me even showing up here in the first place. And then the funny thing is I always think social media, what’s so wild about a lot of these places that do really well, even though there’s some criticism about them behind closed doors, is that you’ll still take the selfie there anyway.
Because you cannot allow yourself to be seen as outside of the culture. So it doesn’t even matter if I enjoyed it personally. What matters is that you see me here because this is how you know that I’m… I’m with us. You know, you can’t, you can’t play, you can’t play me because I’m at this restaurant where everybody’s going.
I’m showing love. Where are you at? You ain’t gonna come eat this cold, you know, piece of chicken with me? Like, you know what I mean? You’re not gonna cut into that, you know, dry chicken breast with your plastic fork and knife and break it in half? Like, we don’t even care about the experience sometimes. We care about you knowing that we were there and that in itself is an experience.
And when you take out what joy I may have, then it’s kind of like, well, you know, you deserve it if you allow [00:13:00] it.
Panama Jackson: I guess somehow, whatever it was about the way that he experienced these things, and he does it in such an interesting, deadpan way that it’s just like, like, he’s not being mean about this stuff, he’s just stating the fact, like, this is what it is. Like, I couldn’t, I couldn’t order at this time, but it says they were open at this time, I couldn’t go. Um, and I almost wonder if, if The Real Milk and Honey restaurant, if those people don’t fire back, does this keep going, right? Because it’s like, oh, I’m pointing out, I didn’t get food from this place because of the rules that they have in place or the things that were going on. And then they fire back at me, or they fire back, and we all jump on, it’s like, wait a minute, wait a minute. All he’s doing is speaking the truth. This is the problem with the restaurant culture. Y’all can’t take criticism, like, we’re coming in to spend our money, we’re coming in trying to enjoy an experience, we’re having trouble doing that, and you’re basically saying it’s our problem. Like, you’re saying it’s everybody else’s problem. Um, like, what do you think it is about, like, the way that he shows up on the scene that really does that? Like, [00:14:00] what is it about him? Because I’ve, like, I watch those reviews, like, it’s compelling as hell. I don’t even understand why I care so much. It’s very simple, it’s not the most complex stuff. He’s like–
Keith Lee: It’s not my favorite thing, but it’s also not my least favorite thing. It’s alright.
Panama Jackson: And it has had a really positive effect on some restaurants. But the negative stuff is where everything is coming around, that’s what everybody’s commenting on. So like, what do you think it is about his particular style in general that has been the, been something that we can latch on to, or that everybody’s paying attention to? Or is it just like, it’s all these things coming together at one time, it’s the Atlanta-ness of it, it’s the, everybody in Atlanta having beef with the food culture in some way. The stuff you’re talking about, people like, yeah, y’all ain’t a serious city. Like, is it just everything coming together at one time?
Michael B. Jordan: No, I think it’s, well, I won’t say no, it’s a yes and. I think there is everything coming together at one time, but he was such a, his style of doing things makes it really hard to find a serious flaw. And this is a conversation I’ve had with [00:15:00] other, uh, food journalists and editors of food based publications, you know, there’s a look at him. There’s a view of him that says, well, he’s an influencer. And what people need to understand is that he could have done, you know, certain things to really be more transparent about this. And also his selection of these type of restaurants was problematic because they don’t do that. And then also, well, he’s beating up on Black owned restaurants and there was all this stuff. But, you know, again, I think he had such an impact because when I’d watch him, and to be honest, I knew who he was. I had seen some of what he’d done before, but I didn’t really have a reason to be that invested in it until he came to Atlanta. And it just shows you this firestorm that I thought he did a really good job of saying, Hey y’all. I’m from out of town. You know, I didn’t know that there are restaurants that don’t like to do carry out. That’s not really how I thought that these things work, but this is. I love his usage of the word unique. I thought that was like, Ooh, unique is the new interesting, which is maybe this is low key [00:16:00] whack, you know? So I was like, but I thought that that was a very congenial way to talk about it because Atlanta does do its thing in its own way. And he was very transparent. I thought he didn’t at all have to say. Please don’t go out and give these places one star reviews on Yelp just because of what I’m doing here. That’s not fair to them. No one has to go out of their way to tell people to not be mean or mean spirited to someone else. I thought he did an extraordinarily good job of just saying, This is me.
Keith Lee: But again, if y’all would listen to me, don’t leave hate nowhere. If you would like to have your own personal experience on any of these restaurants, I encourage you to go.
Michael B. Jordan: He showed you clips of himself having debates with people about why are you treating me differently than my family and that hit people so hard. He did not have to have that kind of moral clarity of saying, don’t give me any love that you won’t give to my mom and my lady. You know, cause now you are hitting me, but you think I’m important because I’m famous or I might be able to change your business.
That shows you right now, there’s a [00:17:00] flaw in our idea of service and the service element of this whole thing is where it gets less subjective and more objective.
Panama Jackson: What you’re talking about too is so there’s a video he posted like this recap of his time in Atlanta. He goes to Old Lady Gang which is a restaurant owned by Kandi Burruss and and whoever else owns. I know it’s an ownership group but Kandi is like the the one we associate with it.
Keith Lee: My family asked how long the wait was to be seated they said an hour to an hour and a half. She also said they didn’t have any reservations available so they didn’t take out any number any contact information. Nothing. My family then came and relayed that message to me and I decided to go in myself. We walked in and we were greeted by a nice young lady and then I met some amazing people who were eating there and we took some pictures. God is amazing. As soon as me and my wife were done taking pictures, the lady said the table was ready. As always, I don’t want any special treatment. I want to be treated like everybody else. I pay for my food like everybody else. I’m a normal person. I’m a normal customer. Things like this is exactly why I do reviews the way I do. Just because I have a certain amount of followers on social media, don’t make me different from nobody.
Panama Jackson: And he also points out why he’s outside. He sees that [00:18:00] people are waiting outside. So what he does is like, listen, you give the table you have ready for me to those people. You give the people who are here for pick up, for pick up, you make sure they get their food before I get my food.
Because I’m not trying to rely on the celebrity-ness. I’m trying to have the experience that everybody else gets to have. Which is why I enjoyed your talking about like the… He’s talking about food, the way that we would talk, the way that those of us who are not food people talk about it, right? Like, I don’t go to restaurants for the ambiance. I go ’cause I want to eat good. Like, is the food good? Like the experience for me, the food is the experience for me. Like that’s the part that I’m concerned about. I hate when I get like really small portions and stuff ’cause I’m like, what am I, what am I supposed to do with this? So he’s doing this and I, I thought it was so interesting that Kandi. You know, of course, people are asking about this because she’s at, you know, it’s at her restaurant and she’s like, you know, maybe he should just accept that favoritism because that’s our celebrity culture in Atlanta. We do that.
Kandi Burruss: I think he needs to understand that people want to show him love. And it’s not that we don’t love, love our customers, but [00:19:00] if we let one celebrity or one influencer go early it doesn’t hurt the rest of our customers because he’s taking pictures. He’s doing stuff and a lot of them are happy that he’s there, but if he doesn’t eat at our restaurant, it does hurt us.
Panama Jackson: I’m curious what you think about that. Like the celebrity culture of it all.
Michael B. Jordan: It’s probably an awakening for him that, you know, even though he’s been able to operate with a little bit of somewhat anonymity, at least relatively for having millions of followers. That’s gone. And this probably was a ruder awakening than he might have planned for. Uh, and especially coming to a super Black city like Atlanta, you know, there’s, there’s a, there’s a scene of what the Black dining experience mostly incorporates. You know, there are Black fine dining establishments. There are Black places that are looking to offer a different standard of service than, you know, what is being referred to as the grass wall lamb chop and hookah, you know sort of thing and there’s plenty of that. But at the same time when you come into the city and you’re hitting [00:20:00] things and you get on social media and you’re already big… that was bound to happen. I do think that you know so I I can’t disagree with Kandi about you do need to accept celebrity and you need to have a plan for that going forward if he’s going to continue to do reviews. However, what I think this also makes really interesting conversationally is anyone who was in Atlanta, you know, there’s, there’s, you know, there’s this idea of hashtag old Atlanta and hashtag new Atlanta, but definitely hashtag old Atlanta. And a lot of times the, the dividing line of that can be seen as the Olympics. Uh, you know, but that can also include the rise of the Dungeon Family and Outkast, and Goodie Mob and all that. And I like to tell people like, you know, for real, for me, when old Atlanta and new Atlanta split was during the BMF era of Atlanta and when The Real Housewives of Atlanta became a thing. It turned into a place where celebrity had more value before The Real [00:21:00] Housewives and before the massive money shower of BMF and the drug money and the strip clubs at a Vision, the old nightclub that, you know, it was in the middle of Midtown. There was a time in Atlanta where celebrity culture, as long as you weren’t trippin they were the normal people who enjoyed this city being an epicenter of Black culture. You were a local celebrity, you were Hood Superstar, and that’s gone away. So Keith Lee experienced that even as an outsider. Atlanta is now a hype machine. Atlanta is now a place where you go through an assembly line, and if all the stars line up right and you get that stamp. You’re then moved into the stratosphere, where, you know, you used to have, even on the rapper side, you used to have just the Atlanta rapper. It’s to the point now that I don’t even think people associate Lil Baby with Atlanta like that. He’s just Lil Baby. You know, nowadays, Atlanta’s making global things and marketing and branding things that blow up far beyond the city. And Keith Lee experienced that, not even being a resident of the city.
And so, there’s some lessons [00:22:00] involved, but I think he does have to embrace that from now on, especially after Atlanta. He can’t do that. He has to know who he is, you know, know thyself.
Panama Jackson: Absolutely. All right. We’re going to take a quick break here. We come back with Dear Culture. We’re going to talk more about Keith Lee hitting Atlanta.
And I kind of want to make this a more broader discussion about the Black community. So stay tuned here on Deer Culture.
You know, everyone and their mama has been trying to talk to Keith since this all blew up. And he did chat with Eboni K. Williams on her show, theGrio with Eboni K. Williams. You can watch that on YouTube and theGrio. com. All right, what’s going on, everybody? Welcome back to Dear Culture. I’m here with Mike Jordan, who is, uh an Atlanta staple in the journalistic community, foodie, uh, who also, I didn’t mention this earlier, shares the distinction, your household shares a unique distinction with Dear Culture as your wife was also a guest on Dear Culture talking hip hop. She is, uh, one of the editors at, [00:23:00] at Rock the Bells, so we had a conversation about the last great release date in hip hop history, so.
Michael B. Jordan: Oh man, Jacinta Howard, my wife, has all the street credibility. I tell people that all the time. If you know, you know. But Jacinta goes back to, again, old Atlanta. Peppermint Music was the record store in the West End, not far from the Atlanta University Center. She worked there and she wrote about all these albums and everything. So I always tell people I’m reluctant to even say that’s my wife, because you know how it is. It’s like, man, I was somebody before you. You don’t make me. But that’s why, girl, you ain’t even got to have my last name around here. You do what you want, I do what I want. So yeah, man, shout out to Jacinta. She’s, she’s major. And romance books wise, she has a whole other cult following. So I just try to stay out of the way and be a kept man as much as I can be, you know what I mean? That’s the goal. Peppermint Music
Panama Jackson: Sound like a good life to me. Um, I want to revisit something that you said earlier. Well, we’re talking about like the restaurant culture, just the Black community aspect of it. So I’m going to ask that huge global question that there’s probably no right answer for, but Ocho Cinco clearly don’t know enough about Keith [00:24:00] Lee, gets on the show with Shannon Sharpe, they have their nightcap show that they do, whatever, and he’s like, I don’t like it, I don’t like people criticizing. You know how hard it is to be a Black entrepreneur, to run a Black restaurant and all this stuff? And while I get that, I’m also like, but bro, everybody, you’re not required to have a restaurant, right? You are not, we’re not obligated to show up and just because you have it, treat it like you did something solid if it wasn’t, right? What do we owe the Black community in terms of support and or criticism? Like should we be criticizing folks? Maybe the service ain’t great, but should we keep that to ourself like What is, what’s the convo here?
Michael B. Jordan: What is our goal, is what I like to look at these things. Is our goal to continue to create a more just, and, you know, a, a more perfect union? You know, as, as the saying goes… like, what do we want? The problem that happens though is quite often. There, I see this as the leadership sort of dilemma. There is, you know, there can only be [00:25:00] one. Um, if that person gets in and they are not necessarily as dedicated to consistent improvement and bettering of the culture and a true representation of the greatness of what Black people did, then we get this diminished idea of ourselves. And you know, you see that showing up in all types of things, often in entertainment. You feel an obligation to being a monolith and being part of a community that’s just consolidated. Everyone’s always like, you know, we have to, we have to, we have to unify and we got to get behind this and we have to move as one. Well, that’s not how Black people have ever been. And the one great thing about Atlanta that we are kind of this is why this is an important conversation is Atlanta for people who know is a place where you could find every single type of Black person that you ever knew existed and ones that you didn’t. There is the Black weirdo. There’s the Black romantic. There’s the Black scientist. There’s the Black rapper. There’s Black everything. There’s every type of Black person. The more we move into a monolith and the more we’re afraid [00:26:00] of pushing each other to be better, the more we kind of, you know, allow ourselves to fall into, well, we just got to be here for each other no matter what.
And I think the real tragedy is, it says something to us about what type of treatment we accept. And there’s nothing worse than us treating ourselves to a lower standard. You know, when they talk about there were Black slave masters back in the day, like, that’s just an idea. It’s like, Oh, my God, like some of us took advantage of each other that way. Well, yes, some people are immoral, no matter if their skin color is closer to yours or not. If we are taking advantage of each other’s alleged adherence to the idea that Black people got to support each other and we’re not saying that comes with a limit and that comes with an expectation of a standard.
And to me, I think that’s good because that shows me like I know you can do better because you’re Black. I know that you have the ability to uplift and to make this experience incredibly great because Black people have been designing and creating amazing things since Black people [00:27:00] came to the universe.
So when we stop expecting that from each other, we set ourselves up for this long and decrepit slide into mediocrity, and we owe it to ourselves and our children to not be whack.
Panama Jackson: Let me ask you a question though. So you’re a person of influence. I am too. You know, we have platforms that people pay attention to. I do find myself when I go into a place and if I know that the service isn’t good, but I know if I say something, it might, I don’t want to be the reason why something goes left. You know, unless it was just a calamity, then I’m at which point that I’m definitely going to speak on it. Otherwise I’m just like, Hey, I’ll just let it slide. Like, do you ever feel that tension as somebody whose voice does matter in all of these conversations? Like you are a critic, you are somebody who’s, whose voice does matter. So you feel like you, you recognize that, well, I got to speak truth to power?
Michael B. Jordan: You know, there was a recent, uh, situation where it speaks exactly to this.
Pinky Cole was profiled by the New Yorker, the person who brought Slutty Vegan to the world. The writer reached [00:28:00] out to me because he was just like, I’m just having trouble finding anyone who can present any other side other than like, you know, she’s just great and everything like that. But it’s like, there’s gotta be, you know, some nuance and some other things going on. I was like, I don’t mind doing this. And so what I said to the writer was, I think she deserves all the credit in the world for building this amazing brand, this giant, this gargantuan machine. Slutty Vegan is a movement. Slutty Vegan is all over the country. It just got to the Atlanta airport. It’s just, she’s, she’s a monster of that. She’s a marketing genius. And then I said, but if you ask people in a safe space if they like the burger, they’ll say no. And I did not mean that as someone who was trying to come at her harsh. But you know, she reached out to me and she wasn’t happy about that. And you know, she sent me a DM and was like of all the people in this article The only person who had anything negative to say was you a Morehouse guy and she went to Clark and you know I told her I was like listen, I was like You know, if you [00:29:00] want to sit down and talk, we will. And this is all through DMs, and you know, she’s kind of like, No, I jumped the gun and everything. So I’m looking forward to having a real conversation with Pinky. I’ve introduced myself to her before. We’ve never really had a good conversation. But, that’s exactly what the pressure was. When I felt like, you know, I wasn’t supposed to. And this is from her. She’s saying, you know, That was wrong of you, perhaps, to be negative when everything else. And it’s like, but, is anything perfect? And what if I’m just telling you something that it’s just my concern is of being someone who is a journalist. My allegiance is to my audience.
Panama Jackson: Speaking of Pinky Cole, she’s going to be one of our guests on our podcast Writing Black with Myisha Kai. So if you want to learn more about her and Slutty Vegan… Definitely check that episode out.
Michael B. Jordan: The fact that anyone cares enough about what I think that I have sustained a career and I have to kind of guard that reputation by doing all I can to not just blindly say, Hey, you know, and if I was an influencer, you know, it’s just Black, Black, Black, all Black, good, good, good, good, good, good, good.
There is a nuance that needs to go on and we [00:30:00] need to be honest about things and it’s not easy. And again, for Keith Lee, this has apparently resulted in death threats.
Keith Lee: I understand everybody gonna have an opinion on the situation. You can disagree with me. You cannot like what I say. Completely understand, and I’m okay with that.
But when my safety and my family safety start coming into play, that’s where I draw the line at. But what can’t happen is when my family or the restaurants, or anybody’s safety start coming into play, it’s absolutely overboard.
Panama Jackson: He spoke to this in one video that I saw because he’s like, you know, listen, if I go in here and I tell y’all that the food is good, and 400 people show up to get that food, and it turns out it’s bad, they’re not gonna be mad at the restaurant. They’re gonna be mad at me. And then now I don’t, now I don’t get to do the thing that I’m doing anymore because my credibility is shot, right? How I present the information now is kind of the way that I look at it. Like, how do I present that I think something sucks? Well, I can have fun with that too, right? And it usually that, that ends up working as well as a review of a, as a positive review, um, in, in the oddest, the oddest of ways. Um, I want to get back to this thing. So earlier you mentioned like Atlanta as an unserious, it was, it was. [00:31:00] It was implied that Atlanta might be an unserious city when it comes to, I guess, the dining culture, or certain things, just in general. Let’s be honest, when it comes to in general, like, people, people view, like, Black America view Atlanta as a playground, right? Like, Atlanta is effectively, you can… You can come be anybody you want in Atlanta. There’s so much Black opulence, there’s so much money, there’s so much access to things, it’s like, it’s Black Hollywood, it’s Black Motown, it’s all the things that you need. But that is gonna create a space where anybody thinks they can do what they want, which kind of unintentionally could create that unserious type culture where you ain’t taking this seriously, which gets back to The Real Milk and Honey thing with them making that response like, Who’s Keith Lee? Like, this man is talking about an issue he had getting service at your restaurant for various reasons, which is an issue.
If he’s having that problem, other people are too, and your response is like, who is this dude? Like, why does this matter? Which ends up, and I think it was his staff getting the death threats and stuff like that because of how they responded to things and all that. Like, do you think this [00:32:00] ultimately is going to change the way business happens in Atlanta in these spaces?
Michael B. Jordan: I do, I, you know, maybe that’s because I’m an eternal optimist, uh, but I do think it is going to change the way things do because you have to remember this, that same week was the first inaugural Michelin Guide ceremony. So Michelin, which rates and, you know, ranks restaurants, not ranks, but rates restaurants. They had not been in Atlanta or Georgia before this year. They announced it. The city lit up. You know, then they said we’re having the ceremony. And sure enough, five Atlanta restaurants received the one star, you know, recognition of excellence. You can get up to three stars as a single entity. Every everyone who got a star got one star. No one got to no one got three. There were a lot of other restaurants that had been included as recommendations. So sort of like if you pick up a city guide, there are places that, you know, Michelin’s reviewers felt good enough about them to include them in this guy. So that was [00:33:00] a major conversation before. It’s almost like the Keith Lee thing would, you know, that was just something no one was even paying attention to until it happened. And then you had this encapsulation of wait a minute, Michelin, which there were no Black owned restaurants that received a star. There were Black owned and Black led restaurants that certainly are included in the guide. They received a award called the Bib Gourmand, which is sort of like for value and for what you experience there. It may not be quote unquote fine dining, but it’s a very high level of what they’re doing and we recognize it. When you thought about that people were first like well, what’s up with that Michelin we ain’t good enough and everything? And there was that whole thing going on and I was just sitting back. I was like, hmm because if you ask me, you know who… I see value in what the restaurants that got Michelin star provide. There is again a standard and a height of service that, you know, when you want to go in there and you’re just like, wow, this is expensive. It’s like, sure. The place that I think is the best restaurant in Atlanta, Mujo, [00:34:00] it’s Omakase Sushi. It’s $400 a person before you tip. That’s just what it’s going to cost you. That sounds like something that you might kind of sit back and get sticker shock from. But then I ask people, Hey yo, so you were at the club last weekend. So what, y’all got a bottle and you know what I mean? Y’all got lamb chops and everything like that. What was the final ticket? It’s surprisingly close if not above $400. So again, what is your idea of value and what does that bring to you? And I think even that going back to the point about seriousness. There is an idea that we go and we follow what is expected of us culturally and those cultural experiences. We, we assign money to monetary value to it and then we go and we parade that and we say, we’re part of this culture. Whereas over here, there are Black chefs and Black creatives who are aspiring for something that they don’t see as white. They don’t see as bougie. They don’t see as, you know, sediti or any of these words. They’re just striving for a standard of excellence that there are [00:35:00] not many people who are going after that. And it’s very unfortunate when they’re looked at as seeing like, Oh, you trying to be like them folks over there. Do we want the look and the sheen of going after some very good and very positive thing? Or are we actually building it? And are we serious enough to know that’s a long game? That’s not, I launched this last week and I, you need to invest in my startup. We gotta take a little bit of time. So my optimism says… We’re going to get there and the seriousness thing is an issue, but that’s why this conversation is important.
Panama Jackson: Fair enough. All right. We’re going to take one more break here. Dear Culture. When we come back, I have one more question and then we’re going to get to some Blackfessions and Blackammendations uh, with my man, Mike Jordan.
We’re back here on Dear Culture. I’m here with Mike Jordan talking about the Atlanta food scene.
The Keith Lee showing up and turning into General Sherman as he so eloquently stated early on in the conversation. And I kind of have one like, put a bow on it kind of question. Um, and it speaks to what you just talked about, how people like to show up at these places. You know, they’re still going to take the selfie there.
The service might not be great or they’re willing to take a lower standard of service but you gotta let people know that you’re part of the conversation. So this is kind of a, might fly in the face of your personal optimism but, you know, think of it that way. Does the culture in Atlanta, is it going to require restaurants to get any better? Like optimistically, you think maybe Keith Lee changes some of those conversations? Some of those restaurants might be, might make some changes ’cause they don’t want to be on that Summer Jam screen. But does the culture itself even require Atlanta to do any better?
Michael B. Jordan: Uh, that is a great question. I’m not sure that it is going to be a requirement. One of the ways [00:37:00] that makes me, you know, hesitant to say there might be is because, you know, again, when Keith Lee came and he reviewed some places and in ways that people felt was negative, he told other said other places were doing a great job tipping servers $1,000 after tipping the full weight staff $1,000, you know, again, when he’s doing all of that, but again, the places that felt attacked and hit… a lot of people first, you know, jumped out the window was like, yeah, you know, these places aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do. But then after a while you saw that Ocho Cinco thing happened and people being like, yo, like these are, you know, what do you mean?
Ocho Cinco: I don’t like, I don’t like the critiquing of our restaurants and, and having people and, and, and, and talking bad about our goddamn businesses. And like, you know how hard, you know how hard it is for us to even get in the food industry.
Michael B. Jordan: And so there were places, there were people who specifically went to go support these places that, you know, they felt like were being unnecessarily or unfairly targeted with criticism. [00:38:00] So, I don’t know, I think that there, that you can reach a certain point of fame and success and cultural importance to an audience that you become, for lack of a better term, too big to fail. And in Atlanta, that is a thing. We coalesce around things that we want to make sure, uh, they look like they uplift Black community. They look like they are an example of Black excellence, and so whatever that looks like on the critical side, quite often, you know, people diminish that and say, ah, you’re just hating, or ah, you’re just mad because you weren’t a successful person or whatever else is happening. So I think there is, you know, there’s a good reason to be skeptical that the culture is going to force restaurants to change, but I would say more more likely is that you know, as more and more restaurants open you know like what seems to be the hot place today might not be the hot place tomorrow. A lot of factors depend on people continuing to come to your restaurant. So at least now people have [00:39:00] things that they want to think about and like well should I go there should I not?
You can open up a new restaurant tomorrow or see a new one and it’s Black owned and it’s doing something else. We’re in a moment where there could be a shift happening and that could be possibly because the culture has demanded it, but without options, what do you do? You know, are people just going to learn to start cooking immediately right now? I think that’s going to take time. Are people going to want to do something else with their money? Will a recession happen and force people back indoors for a little while longer? So there’s a lot of things that could happen. I’m just not 100 percent sure that we can expect it to change just because of this conversation in the immediacy. But I do think over time we are at the beginning of, of something that could signal that Atlanta wants things to be different in terms of how we dine.
Panama Jackson: I like that. That was a, there was a very all encompassing response to answer. I liked that. That was, that was good. That was good. Alright, so we’ve reached the end of this show, and I have two segments that we’d like to do here with all of our guests.
One is a [00:40:00] Blackfession, which is a recommend– is a confession about your Blackness. Something people might be surprised to know about you, because you’re Black. Mike Jordan, do you have a Blackfession for us?
Michael B. Jordan: I do. Um. One of my favorite, uh, you know, recording acts, groups, is a group called Garbage, and it is, uh, a singer named Shirley Manson, uh, Scottish lady, I believe, very tall, beautiful, and she has, uh, three accompanying band members, one of them, his name is Butch Vig, and, uh, he was in…
And the thing why I would remember Butch Vig, Butch Vig was responsible for doing a lot of production on Nirvana’s early stuff. So, you know how Black people love Nirvana, but you know, it’s kind of like cool to love Nirvana, but Black folks love Nirvana. Garbage is like, to me, the rock and roll equivalent of Sade.
You got a female lead. And you have three dudes behind her, but if anybody goes back and listens, and now, now, now I want to say this. The first two albums are the ones [00:41:00] that I’m specifically, that I love. The first one is self titled, Garbage, and the second album is Version 2. 0. Here’s the Blackfession of this, that’s really, I might have to duck after I say this. Version 2.0 was up for Album of the Year against the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and I wanted it to win.
Panama Jackson: Oh wow, that is the Blackfession. Okay, you unfolded that one really well. Okay, so you, wow.
Michael B. Jordan: Yeah.
Panama Jackson: In the middle of Lauryn Hill’s tour, where she’s talking about why she don’t,
why she don’t show up.
Michael B. Jordan: She didn’t, I wanted her to rap more on that album. That was really what it was. I was like, man, she can rap so well, and she was singing a lot and everything. And I was like, man, it was only like two or three cuts of rap. So that was me maybe being salty as a hip hop guy that I didn’t get what I wanted. But Version 2.0, if you’re into, if you’re into just, if you’re exploring music, trust me, Garbage is dope.
Again, white rock version of Sade. Listen to it. You can send me a DM. I’ll block you if you threaten my life. But you know, if not, you know, if you’re critical of it, I can take that. I can [00:42:00] take critique. I’m in Atlanta. I know how to take critical, uh, you know, analysis of my stuff.
Panama Jackson: Being from Atlanta kind of implies the other direction on that one, but we’ll go ahead and take your word for it. All right. So what we usually do then is we have a Blackammendation because sometimes people need a palate cleanser for that. Which I think your, your Blackfession is, that’s pretty sizable, it’s pretty significant. I don’t know that anybody on the, on, I don’t know that anybody, and I don’t love that album by the way. I don’t love Miseducation, so that’s one of my things. But most people would always want it to win because we’re always rooting for everybody Black. But okay, so, do you have a Blackammendation? It’s a recommendation about something Black for everybody to, to, to bring it home for us.
Michael B. Jordan: I do. Uh, I would say, uh, there’s a book called The Sellout that I just really, really enjoyed.
It’s not a new book, but I was, you know, my wife was recently, she, she, she instructed me to get the kind of like, uh, bookshelves that, you know, attached to the walls and is, you know, that kind of look like floating shelf units. So we did that, you know what I mean? And again, she’s an [00:43:00] author. So once, once we got those, she arranged the books and sort of like a color coded thing, it starts with red and everything.
I’m like, this is just because you wanted this to look like a spectrum. Um, there’s no rhyme or reason to this. They just a color coded book thing, but I noticed that book recently, uh, The Sellout is by an author named Paul Beatty. I highly recommend it. It’s super hilarious. It’s just like, it takes the idea of, you know, a problematic to the community Black man who’s in, uh, California and it’s just, it’s just a really entertaining and engaging read, but it’s also for like that, that different kind of Black person. If you, if you like the TV show Atlanta with Donald Glover, if you like that show, you will like this book, The Sellout. So it’s a different kind of Black read, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. So pick up The Sellout by Paul Beatty. It’s a great book.
Panama Jackson: All right, brother, we appreciate your time here. Thank you for bringing your insights, your culture and very specific insights too, because when I, the first person I thought of when we started talking about Atlanta food [00:44:00] culture and the culture, it was you. I was like, I got, I got somebody. I got somebody. This, this, this, this is the, this is the guy with his hand on the, with his finger on the pulse. He’s been a part of the culture since he was handing out noontime records things back in, back in the day in, in, in, in Atlanta and Morehouse. During our time at Morehouse, which overlapped, uh, you always been somebody who’s been in the know, been a part of every big conversation. Um, so thank you for being here and having this. Where can people find out what you’re doing? And please tell people also what it is you’re doing. Cause just the, this past week and these past, like you’ve been doing some really sizable things with the platform that you have in, in, in the job that you have at the AJC. So, how can people get a hold to you if they’re looking to, to, to engage with your, your work more? And what do you have going on?
Michael B. Jordan: Thank you for asking. Thanks again for having me on this show, Panama. Like, this podcast is so well done. It’s so intelligent. You are the exact right person to be leading a podcast on Black culture.
Again, like, this is just, it’s natural. So, I’m [00:45:00] happy to be here. I’m happy that you are where you are. Shout out to theGrio for understanding that as well. You can find me on Twitter, uh, I am @Michael B. Jordan because that is my name. So the same person that you’re thinking, he is me, he is I, and I am him just not really. But @Michael B. Jordan. Well, funny thing, my wife interviewed him once for, uh, for, was it Upscale Magazine? She interviewed him once and she said, oh, by the way, my husband is the one who has the @Michael B. Jordan. He was like, what? So we chatted real quickly. And you know, he’s real cool guy, but I’m not coming up off the Michael B. Jordan, uh, Twitter handle. That’s me.
Panama Jackson: You shouldn’t.
Michael B. Jordan: That’s me. Um, you can find me there. You can find me on Instagram @Mike Jordan ATL um, you know, I’m on Threads and all those other places. And you asked about what I’m into now. So again, I’m a Senior Editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, uh, which is going through some really very cool changes.
And you’ll start to see that around the beginning of 2024. But one of the things that we just had, as you mentioned, really busy week, uh, the Atlanta Journal Constitution just released its first full length [00:46:00] feature documentary called The South Got Something to Say, based upon Atlanta’s role in hip hop celebrating its 50th anniversary and how Atlanta came to be what’s seen as now the cultural, the capital of the culture.
So and that of course centered around the moment when Andre 3000 at the 1995 Source Awards, when they won the award for Best New Artist Outkast, Andre got up on that stage and famously said, the south got something to say. It looks at before that happened and what got him to that place to want to say that and what happened ever since. So we had a great event, um, we screened the 90 minute documentary. You can see that soon if it’s already off the AJC. com. You have to subscribe to see it, but it is coming soon. Probably going to be out on a streaming platform soon, uh, Senator Warnock came to the documentary premiere, uh, former Mayor Bottoms, uh, Keisha, as we call her in Atlanta, she was there, uh, we had a star studded event and a packed house, Pastor Troy did, uh, No More Playing G.A. after the premiere with the belt across his shoulder, so it was a major event and, you know, I love [00:47:00] Atlanta, I love Black people, I’m always trying to, you know, make sure that we are a Aspiring for the things that our parents and the generations before us put us here to do so, you know If you’re about that and you want to hear what I’m trying to cover and bring light to holler at me. And you know, I’m at the AJC all the time, but you know, just I’m around in Atlanta you know, I’m not hard to find and let me tell y’all something else. I’m, not that bougie. I go and eat chicken wings off Campbellton Road quite often, so you know, again, like, I might like a Omakase dinner, but Wing Depot on Campbellton Road, if you want some real good chicken wings, there is a red trailer that looks like it grew out of a parking lot next to an AutoZone, trust me, and I’m not the only one that says this, Wing Depot, Campbellton Road. They did not pay me to say that, I would take an extra chicken wing, if they’re giving me a 10 piece and I get 11. I would accept that, as you know, some down under the table payment for my endorsement here, but shoutout to them and shoutout to ATL.
Panama Jackson: Yeah, I’m partial to the A Town wings on, um, Metropolitan, the lemon pepper wings. I, when I was down there for homecoming, I got a, I [00:48:00] got, I ordered like 150 of them bad boys for the, for the squad. And we just sat around the house eating… eating our lemon pepper, lemon pepper wet wings from A Town Wings.
Michael B. Jordan: Did you notice there’s an A Town Wings in Huntsville, Alabama now?
I was like, oh wow. Like yeah, I don’t know if it’s still there, but there was an A Town Wings in Huntsville. I’m just like, wow, they’re doing obviously an impressive job. But no, A Town Wings is solid too, man. Just, just make sure that your lemon pepper wet, are based on sauce and not grease. Cause sometimes that, you know, Lawry’s seasoning is a little too shiny down there. So, you know, if it, if it looks like it’s glistening, don’t dip the wing in there because that’s going, that’s going to come back to haunt you later on in life.
Panama Jackson: My man. Appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us here at Dear Culture. Thank you for the conversation. And thank you to everybody for listening to Dear Culture, which is an original podcast of theGrio Black Podcast Network. It is produced by Sasha Armstrong and Regina Griffin is our Director of Podcasts. Again, my name is Panama Jackson. Thank you for listening. Have a Black one. [00:49:00]
You know, everyone in their mama has been trying to talk to Keith since this all blew up.
And he did chat with Eboni K. Williams on her show, theGrio with Eboni K. Williams. You can watch that on YouTube and theGrio. com.
Writing Black: We started this podcast to talk about not just what Black writers write about, but how. Well, personally, it’s on my bucket list to have one of my books banned. I know that’s probably bad, but I think…
Ooh, spicy. They were yelling, N word, go home. And I was looking around for the N word because I knew it couldn’t be me because I was a queen. I’m telling people to quit this mentality of identifying ourselves by our work. To start to live our lives and to redefine the whole concept of how we work and where we work and why we work in the first place,
My, my biggest strength throughout, throughout my career has been having incredible mentors and specifically Black women. I mean, I’ve been writing poetry since I was like eight, you know, I’ve been reading Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and Maya Angelou [00:50:00] and so forth and so on since I was like a little kid.
Like the banjo was Blackly Black, right? For many, many, many years. Everybody knew. Because sometimes I’m just doing some– that because I just want to do it. I’m honor to be here. Thank you for doing the work that you’re doing. Keep shining bright. And we, and like you said, we’re going to keep writing Black. As always, you can find us on theGrio app or wherever you find your podcasts.
