Lured in by a blackboard sign on the street in Davia’s neighborhood announcing “Spotlight on Black Entrepreneurs,” we enter the creative and growing world of Black-Owned Pet Businesses. 

Music from our stories, music of people who passed in the year just ended, music we want you to know about.

Deep thanks to all of you who support the work of The Kitchen Sisters. Without your collaboration and contributions, our stories, internship, and mentoring program would not be possible.

In January 1973, following the Christmas bombing of Vietnam, conductor Leonard Bernstein gathered an impromptu orchestra to perform an “anti-inaugural concert” protesting Richard Nixon’s official inaugural concert and his escalation of the war in Vietnam. One of the main performances of the official inaugural was the 1812 Overture with its booming drums replicating the sound of war cannons.

On the occasion of her 80th birthday in 2000 The Kitchen Sisters, along with food writer Peggy Knickerbocker, visited the home of Cecilia Chiang, the legendary Chinese-American restaurateur, chef and founder of The Mandarin Restaurant in San Francisco for a bit of an oral history. Cecilia Chiang introduced regional Chinese cooking to America in the 1960s, revolutionizing what most Americans thought Chinese cooking was. Elegant and savvy, her restaurant drew in celebrities like Mae West and Pavarotti, rock stars like John Lennon, Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane, and other food enthusiasts. She inspired James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Julia Child, and generations of chefs and restaurateurs.