Best Black-Owned Brunch Spots to Try This Weekend
You voted. Here’s where we’re sending you.
Brunch is not just a meal. It is a ritual. It is the Sunday reset, the birthday table, the “we needed this” catch-up with people you love. It is plates being passed before anyone is fully awake and a DJ that makes you forget it is before noon. At its best, it is an event.
We asked our community to tell us the Black-owned brunch spots they love. The places they keep going back to. The rooms they send their out-of-town guests. The meals they are still talking about three days later.
These ten came out on top.
Follow your fork.
2293 Peachtree Rd NE, Atlanta, GA
The name tells you everything. It feels like your coolest friend’s apartment, except that friend owns over 10,000 vinyl records, employs a Haitian-born chef who will rearrange your understanding of what Caribbean food can do, and throws a Saturday brunch that turns into a full event before you realize it happened. Chef Dayana Joseph’s menu is Afro-Caribbean and unapologetically creative. Oxtail hummus. Snapper ceviche. Jerk lamb chops. Turkey wings with a reputation of their own. Ebony Magazine put it on their list of favorite Black-owned restaurants in the country. The vinyl spins all night. The DJ sets the weekend brunch. Book on Resy and plan to stay longer than you intended.
2748 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL
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Open since 2012 in Lincoln Park, and the line still forms before they unlock the door. Founders Dr. Tanya and Craig Richardson built this place on a simple belief: that brunch staples deserve a real, creative, loving hand. The French Toast Flight is the proof. A rotating selection of flavors, lemon, strawberry, blueberry, caramel, and a weekly surprise, all served together so you do not have to pick. The Cluck and Gaufre, chicken and waffles on a sweet potato waffle, has been a repeat winner since day one. The servers do trivia at the table and you end up staying three hours. BYOB as long as you buy a juice. Get on the waitlist online before you go. Eater, Zagat, and the Hungry Black Man all got here before you. Do not let that stop you.
4337 Banks St, New Orleans, LA
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A converted shotgun house in Mid-City New Orleans. The walls are covered in local art. The tables are close. The music is right. This is not a restaurant that is trying to feel like a neighborhood spot. It is a neighborhood spot. Chef Corwin and owner Austin built something in the kind of space that cannot be manufactured, and the food matches the room. The BBQ Shrimp and Grits keep coming up in every review, every comment, every group text from someone who just got back from New Orleans. The Crawfish Boudin Balls, the Wafflewich, the biscuit beignets with vanilla sauce, they all make their own argument. BYOB. Family-owned. Make a reservation because they fill up fast and the wait on a busy morning is real. Come with people you want to sit with for a while.
2149 Frederick Douglass Blvd, Harlem, NY
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Chef Carlos Swepson is from Mississippi and his food carries it. He and his wife Markisha run this Harlem institution on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, a room inside a historic brownstone that packs out on weekends and runs a live DJ to match the energy the neighborhood brings. The shrimp and grits, the catfish, the French toast that visitors keep calling the best they have had in New York. The wraparound bar has its own following. The brunch specials rotate, so regulars always have a reason to come back. On a Sunday in Harlem, there are few better places to be. Book on Resy. Show up ready for a full afternoon.
Locations in Dallas and Arlington, Texas
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Co-owners Rickey Booker Sr. and Jonathan Biley-Smith started with a food truck and built their way to two dine-in locations in Dallas-Fort Worth. The room they built feels like Showtime at the Apollo on a Saturday morning. Walls covered with cultural icons. Booths lined with vintage car seats. R&B and oldies are playing loud enough that strangers at neighboring tables start singing together. The recipes come from mothers and grandmothers and aunts, seasoned with the Breakfast Brothers All-Purpose Seasoning, which is a family secret and the reason everything tastes the way it does. Order the red velvet waffles with chicken wings. Order the catfish and pancakes. Order the biscuits and gravy and let someone at your table fight you for the last bite. Add yourself to the waitlist online before you pull up. The wait is real, and it is worth it.
3714 E Indian School Rd, Phoenix, AZ
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Larry White grew up bussing tables in his grandmother’s soul food restaurant, and that upbringing is the foundation of everything at Brunch and Sip. He and his wife, Rasheedah, built this Phoenix spot on scratch cooking and the conviction that brunch does not need to be complicated. It just needs to be done right. The Epic Tableside Flambe, three housemade pancakes served a la mode with vanilla gelato and banana foster flambeed at your table, is the signature that people come in specifically to order. The peach cobbler French toast has its own fanbase. Open every day of the week, which is one of the things that makes this place so valuable. Free valet on busy mornings. DJ on weekends. The kind of place where you go for breakfast and it becomes the whole morning.
5512 La Branch St, Houston, TX
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The story of this restaurant starts almost a century ago with Lucille B. Smith, an educator, culinary innovator, and entrepreneur who built her own food corporation in the early 20th century. Her great-grandsons, brothers Chris and Ben Williams, found an old house in Houston’s Museum District in 2011 and decided it was the right place to continue her legacy. James Beard Award finalist Chef Chris Williams runs the kitchen today, growing vegetables on their own farms just miles from the restaurant and bringing them to a menu that honors Lucille’s recipes while pushing them somewhere new. The oxtail omelette is the brunch order this restaurant is known for. Tender braised oxtail, Serrano cheddar, caramelized onions, surrounded by oxtail au jus. The fried green tomatoes, the chili biscuits, and the Tennessee hot duck have made their own arguments. Live entertainment on weekends.
1005 U St NW, Washington, DC
What started as a tiny carryout spot on U Street in 2003 has become one of Washington DC’s most important restaurants, full stop. James Beard Community Favorite. Washingtonian Magazine Best Mac and Cheese. A Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives stop that introduced the whole country to what DC already knew. Chef and owner Oji Abbott is a native Washingtonian who grew up cooking in a family full of cooks, and Oohh’s and Aahh’s is built on that foundation: a community safe space where the soul food is done right and has been done right for over twenty years. The mac and cheese inspires actual devotion. The fried chicken is the stuff people talk about on the plane ride home. The shrimp and grits, the blackened catfish, the candied yams, the banana pudding. The Georgia Avenue location runs legendary brunches with bottomless mimosas. Go. Order everything.
765 Wall St, Los Angeles, CA
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In the Flower District of Downtown Los Angeles, husband and wife Chef Michael Reed and Kwini Reed built a California brunch institution from scratch. Every dish is made from scratch. Original recipes. Quality seasonal ingredients. Daily from 9 AM to 3 PM in a bright room where fresh flowers sit on every table because the flower market is right across the street. Best breakfast in LA. Best chicken and waffles in LA. Best chicken sandwich in LA. Not all from the same outlet but from enough of them that the point lands. The Buttermilk Fried Chicken and Waffles is the signature. The Pulled Pork Hash, BBQ pulled pork over brick hash with two eggs, arugula, and creme fraiche, is the move when you want something savory and serious. At the end of the day, the restaurant boxes up unsold food and gives it to people experiencing homelessness. The food is the reason to go. That part is the reason to love it.
1930 E 7th Ave, Tampa, FL
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Ybor City is Tampa’s most historic neighborhood, and 7th and Grove is its best table. Co-owners Dr. Jamaris Glenn and Khalilaa McDuffie are both Tampa natives who built this space because they believe Black hospitality is not a nostalgic idea. It is a current, living, thriving practice. The murals by Carlos Pons Paz cover the walls. The craft cocktails are built with intention. The jalapeño cornbread is the best in the state and there are people in Tampa who will argue that point with anyone. The “Awaken My Love” fried chicken lollipops come with three sauces and a table debate. The fried green tomato stack with pecan, herbed goat cheese, and smoky buttermilk Caesar is the dish that seals it. Saturday brunch needs a reservation. Sunday is first come, first served, and by early afternoon the DJ is in, the lounge is full, and whatever started as brunch has become something else. Come for the food. Stay for what happens after.
These are the tables our community keeps coming back to. Follow BRW for more guides to Black-owned dining, city by city, season by season.
Author: Falayn Ferrell
Managing Partner - Operations of Black Restaurant Week
