Desiree Robinson

Desiree Robinson has a wish. “When it comes to the end of my days, I want to have eaten in every restaurant in this city and surrounding areas,” she says.

In 1977, Robinson's husband, the late Raymond Robinson, opened the barbecue restaurant Cozy Corner on North Parkway near Manassas. Back then, she says, African-American-owned restaurants in Memphis served either soul food or barbecue.

Today, Robinson is 80 and still works at the restaurant. She says she still sees a lot of African-American-owned restaurants in town selling barbecue and soul food. She and her family, most of whom work at Cozy Corner, eat dinner at a restaurant every Sunday and she frequents both white- and black-owned restaurants.

Her husband originally wasn’t interested in opening a restaurant, Robinson says. He wanted to be a businessman and didn't care what type of business. But he also was a great cook and did a lot of backyard barbecuing.

The couple moved from Memphis to Denver after he got a job at Martin Marietta Materials. He opened Ray’s Barbecue in the Mile-High City because friends raved about his barbecue. That restaurant lasted several years until the Robinsons decided to move back to Memphis.

Originally, Desiree went to work at AT&T and her husband ran the restaurant. “I wanted him to open it because he was more outgoing than I was,” she says. “He never met a person he didn’t like and didn’t like him. He was so very friendly and so outgoing. And then he was an excellent cook. I knew that if he stayed here and worked in the business it would gain prominence quicker.”

Over the years, another pit and more menu items were added to Cozy Corner. The restaurant survived a fire and the business moved across the street into much smaller quarters until the original restaurant reopened.

Now, four generations of her family work at the restaurant, Robinson says. “It’s a fun thing. I like to come to work because I enjoy being with the folk I greet. And most of my family works in here. I get to see family I wouldn’t have seen until the weekend probably. I enjoy the camaraderie.”

There were several restaurants owned by African Americans when her husband opened Cozy Corner, says Robinson. She believes the Civil Rights movement was why more black people opened them. “I really think it had a lot to with folks feeling free to do things that they had not previously felt free to do,” she says. “You felt free to try it anyway and see if it would work.”

White people didn’t frequent some African American-owned restaurants. “I always felt that they weren’t sure if they were welcome,” she says.

By contrast, Cozy Corner served mostly white people when the restaurant opened, Robinson says. “For the first five years, the bulk of our business was white. Our family came. Eventually, blacks started coming in little by little. This was quite a while ago and I don’t think they really could tell what race of people were running the restaurant. The customers were white. My mother-in-law, you could not tell what race she was. My husband was light-skinned. We had a few employees at that point in time that were white.”

Now, she says, “Everybody under the sun comes in here. If this room was full right now, half of the people would be races other than black.”

And, she says, “Half the people would be people outside of Memphis because they love to come in and tell us how they found out about us. We have never advertised.”

Cynthia Daniels, creator of Memphis Black Restaurant Week, which celebrates African-American-owned restaurants, says, “I do feel like soul food and barbecue are staples in the community, but there are other types of restaurants out there.”

This year’s Memphis Black Restaurant Week, which celebrated its third anniversary in March, included Scoops Parlor, which sells crepes and gelatos; G. Alston, a fine dining restaurant; Slice of Soul Pizza Lounge; and Two Vegan Sistas.

“For me, one of the reasons I did Restaurant Week was the variety of restaurants in the African-American community,” Daniels says.

In the past, soul food and barbecue restaurants were about the only kind of African-American restaurants because, Daniels says, “You grew up in your city and that’s what it was. You didn’t get out of your community sometimes.”

And now? “It’s a generational thing. We’ve grown up with the technology, the ability to travel more. I think all young people — the millennials and gen-Xers — have just been exposed to different types of food, different types of culture.” Times really are changing.

That’s why the younger generation tries different types of things. How many African-American restaurants now are in Memphis? “I’d say 100 all over Memphis,” Daniels says.