‘Slow food’ picks up speed in Baton Rouge

Standing at the corner of Thomas H. Delpit Drive and East Washington Street, Imam Fahmee Sabree wipes a line of sweat clean from his brow as he watches his neighborhood bear the brunt of an unusual, pre-summer swelter. Two pop-up shops are nearby, both manned by locals hunched down in the cool of tent shade. One offers fried turkey wings from an ice chest. Hanging off the other, women’s blouses in rainbow colors ripple and wave like flags with the push of every warm gust. It is mid-afternoon. One block south, two men step lazily out of a small corner store—its worn, hand-painted edifice using the words “cigarettes” and “alcohol” like fishing lures. Twenty-five years ago this intersection looked much different. It was a thriving food center for the neighborhood that outsiders like to call Old South Baton Rouge—or “Old South”—but residents call it “The Bottom,” an uneasy colloquialism for what was, at one time, the southernmost stripe of the city’s expanding suburbs. Where Sabree stands now, a man used to sell fresh mustard greens and okra from a wagon. Across Delpit were a butcher shop and a bakery. Behind him, The Islamic Complex he founded in 1988 operates, ironically, out of what was once Jay’s Supermarket. A few blocks away, a large Superfresh chain grocery stood just off Highland Road. More than a decade ago, it too closed. “That was bad, because from here people could walk there,” Sabree says. “Now, you’d have to walk all the way down Government Street or pay for the bus to Albertsons or Wal-Mart. Most people here are seniors and on a fixed income. They get income once a month and have to wait on a relative to drive them to the grocery store.” Find out more about this neighborhood, and how the slow food movement is changing lives in Baton Rouge’s inner city by clicking here.