Valerie Erwin. (Photo provided by Valerie Erwin.)

Shrimp and grits may be a common menu item in restaurants and cafes here in Philadelphia now, but that wasn’t always the case.

Local chef and activist Valerie Erwin has seen the evolution of cuisines from the Lowcountry — the region along the South Carolina coast, the islands, and parts of Georgia — and how it has become part of many menus up North.

“Food evolves,” she said. But “it doesn’t mean that you lose sight of where it came from.”

The Great Migration, in its first wave from 1910 to the 1940s, involved millions of Black people moving from Southern states to Northern cities for jobs, education, and to escape racial violence. Then, from the 1940s to the 1970s, it happened again. This migration played a major role in shaping Philadelphia’s connection to Southern Black culture in many ways. 

One of the migration waves to Philadelphia was made up of Black families from the Gullah Geechee culture. Erwin comes from a Geechee family and considers herself “Geechee once removed.”

Traditional Gullah Geechee dishes, passed down by descendants of enslaved West and Central African people in the region, incorporated rice, corn, okra, and black-eyed peas as staples.

Erwin’s family lineage became intimately connected to her work as a chef when she started her first restaurant. 

Geechee Girl — and her impacts

Erwin first opened Geechee Girl Rice Café in 2003, and it moved to Mt. Airy in 2006, featuring Lowcountry cuisine. It highlighted food connected to her family’s Southern roots and other dishes connected to a Pan-African tradition of food, including Caribbean and traditional West and East African dishes. 

“It was like a thread that I was trying to keep going about how African people kept their food ways no matter where they moved,” said Erwin.

She had already worked with food practically her entire life before she decided to open the restaurant in Germantown, which eventually moved to 6825 Germantown Avenue. After talking to her sister and friend, the chef decided on the unique concept.

Geechee Girl’s dishes were all inspired by the dishes she remembers at the table while growing up in North Philly. 

It could be the quick meals her mother, grandmother, and aunts would make for dinner, like rice, quick biscuits, and a simple version of black-eyed peas (beans would only be something that Erwin liked as an adult). 

It might be her mother’s Hoppin’ John recipe, a black-eyed peas and rice pilaf served on New Year’s Day. It may also be her dad’s savory cornbread. 

It could even be the North Philly BBQ Erwin grew up with, in her memory, a whole pig cooked in a big brick pit, seasoned in a North Carolina style with a bit of spicy and vinegary sauce.

All of these food memories evolved into the food creations she served at Geechee Girl. 

The restaurant had Hoppin John on the menu every day, and not just for New Year’s. They took the idea of fried beans and rice and cooked it with duck confit. They served Caribbean-inspired rice and pea dishes with coconut milk and savory akara fritters made from black-eyed peas. 

“So that’s really where it started,” Erwin said, referencing the beginning of the restaurant’s single concept. “And you know, honestly, it was just a wonderful place to start because it made me think more about the kind of heritage foods that I’d grown up eating that I didn’t necessarily ever make.” 

Geechee Girl Rice Café closed at the end of 2014, which she admits wasn’t always easy to run.

“I was always so busy. I was always so worried. I did these things, but I never had time to enjoy them really, or to analyze them very much until I was way, way out of it,” she reflected.

“And really, like, oh, [Geechee Girl] was a nice thing that was innovative. That wasn’t something that other people were doing.”

Erwin said it wasn’t until she got fully out of the restaurant business that she was able to see the impact and innovation it brought to the city.

Pointing back to the Philly food scene before Geechee Girl, she said shrimp and grits were still a very regional dish, specifically served in the Lowcountry. Erwin’s influence can also be seen in newer generations of Philadelphia chefs and restaurateurs.

While those impacts can be felt far-reaching, she also said they are in nearby intimate moments. There were people she and her sister had never met until they opened Geechee Girl.

Now, those folks are good enough friends that they’ve been to their house many times. She never knew those kinds of relationships would be formed because of the restaurant. 

Life since Geechee Girl

Since closing, the renowned chef has been busy. She used to run the EAT Cafe, cited as Philly’s first pay-what-you-can restaurant.

She’s currently on the board at The People’s Kitchen Philadelphia, which “uses food to empower, transform, and heal the community through free, nutritious meals, gardening, and education,” and Germantown’s own Wyck Historic House and Garden.

Erwin works part-time with St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children, running the Farm to Families food access program.

In between all of that, she still does catering.

Years’ worth of cultural preservation and foodways work won Erwin the Leeway Transformation Award, a $15,000 unrestricted grant, and the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Award in Food, a $100,000 unrestricted grant, in 2025. 

The Leeway Transformation Award application was challenging, she said, especially trying to find ways to document the work she has done as a cultural preservationist.

Events where she was presenting food and its history aren’t always packed, but more intimate. Although time-consuming to put together, it was rewarding to show the big impact that these more focused, smaller programs and events made.

“One thing is I’m interested in what things you can do close to your own community, however you define that. So it might be your neighborhood. It might be your family. It might be something regional. So I felt it was really nice to get recognition for something that I’m doing in Philadelphia.”

The Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Award in Food came to her without her even applying. Someone nominated her, the foundation researched her work, and reached out to let her know she won the award. 

Her cultural preservation work continued this month, as she was the head chef for Pepperpot, a special program in conjunction with Art Philly. It highlighted Black women in Philadelphia who used to sell pepper pot soup on the city streets. 

Originally developed by the late interdisciplinary artist and founder of the Philadelphia Jazz Project, Homer Jackson, who passed away two years ago, his idea transformed into a collaboration between Erwin, illustrator Eric Battle, and musician V. Shayne Frederick.

A live musical and poetic performance worked alongside imagined portraits of “Pepperpot women” by Eric Battle, and a pepper pot food service organized and facilitated by Erwin. 

Erwin has worked with Jackson on a variety of projects, including an entire presentation called Great Migrations in 2017, on the 100th anniversary of the Great Migration. Erwin worked with another chef and put together five different regional menus for different states, starting in Virginia and moving up to Philadelphia, of the ways Southern food came up to these Northern cities. 

Getting back to her current community, if her schedule permits, Erwin is interested in getting more involved with food justice work here in the neighborhood, mentioning the Germantown Community Fridges. 

She is also slowly writing a book, for which she has plenty of recipes, though the writing process is long. 

The chef would love to find a house in Charleston, South Carolina, a place she didn’t get to visit until after she closed her restaurant, though it’s where her family is from. She said when she finally made it down there, she felt more at home there than she ever did anywhere else. 

But Charleston, like many other places, is pricing most folks out with higher and higher home sale and rental rates. 

“I think with every move there’s the potential for the culture being dulled. There are a lot of people who are really working and fighting to keep that culture alive, and a lot of people who are just living it and don’t have to, you know, don’t have to make a conscious effort, but as their numbers get diluted, then the culture gets diluted, and I feel that a little bit even in Philadelphia.”

But still, it’s a dream that she hopes will happen.

Maleka Fruean is Germantown Info Hub’s community organizer, a writer, and mother of four, all raised in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. She has a B.A. in journalism from Temple University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from St. Joseph’s University, and uses both to embrace the power of stories.