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• 1 2019-09-28T01:14:55-07:00 Fernay McPherson on Food 2 plain 2019-09-29T20:42:48-07:00 I was born and raised here in San Francisco in the Western Addition. The Fillmore is the special place for me in The City. My father is also a San Francisco native raised in the Fillmore. My mother migrated here from Texas as a little girl.
         Being an entrepreneur, a chef and owner of my own business, which is a Southern comfort food catering company, our next goal is to find a brick and mortar space to represent what used to be in the Fillmore back in that era of the Harlem of the West. I did not live the Harlem of the West, but my family did. We do Southern comfort food. We do a lot of food that I grew up eating. The name of the business is Minnie Bell’s. That was the inspiration of my great aunt, who is Minnie. She’s 84 now. Lillie Belle was my grandmother. Those two women inspired me to cook, so combining their names for my business was me taking them on my journey.
         The Fillmore is special to me because of the history that my family has. It’s definitely not the community that I knew growing up. It was a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody. It was a big family-oriented neighborhood.
          I’ve seen a lot of changes take place within the community that are bittersweet for me. I do miss the community that was there while at the same time, there’s been changes for the better, but in those changes, some people were forced out. Most people were forced out because of not being able to afford to live there anymore. Not very many African-American owned businesses anymore. Very, very few.
         I’m fortunate enough to still be there. My parents are still there. My parents are still in the house that I grew up in. My brother is still there. We’re very fortunate to still be in our neighborhood, in our community, and be able to show our children the same neighborhood that we grew up in.