Milwaukee: African Hut closing doors
When I lived in Milwaukee, I always looked for an opportunity to go
downtown to African Hut for some joloff rice and peanut stew. It
appears that after 15 years African Hut will no longer exist. There
was a restaurant African Harvest owned by a Liberian family in Center
City that I frequented as well but it closed before I left Milwaukee in
2001. Their spiced tea was especially delicious.
Something that stands out in the article to me is "the restaurant never generated strong support among African-Americans in Milwaukee." I definitely know this to be true. My ex-husband took his entire staff to African Harvest for some sort of celebration and the majority of them (all African Americans) would not eat anything. I remember him not understanding that they would eat all kinds of pig feet and chitterlings but wouldn't eat chicken dishes from this restaurant. The reason they wouldn't eat the food had nothing to do with the food itself but more so with their attitudes toward Africans and "not knowing what they do with the food".
African Hut probably was
able to last longer because of its downtown location since the main
customers were suburbanites and African Americans not native to
Milwaukee. I would guess that African Harvest failed sooner as it,
being in the Black part of town, did not get that foot traffic of
suburbanites and tourist. It's definitely a sad day.
