‘The culture still runs through us’: Ma Daisy’s restaurant honors Gullah Geechee roots and Black pride

Grio Green Book: Ma Daisy’s restaurant will open on Juneteenth, launched by Bridgette Frazier to honor her Gullah Geechee heritage. TheGrio got a special sneak peek at the location, which also includes a cultural center and business market.

Bridgette Frazier stands under the 80-degree South Carolina sun and doesn’t seem to break a sweat. Her eyes are filled with cool determination and hope as she walks through the grounds of a historic plot of land she’s transformed using her entrepreneurial and political skills—renovated in honor of her ancestors.

To the right of her is Ma Daisy’s, the soon-to-open restaurant named after her grandmother, which will honor the foodways of the Gullah Geechee culture both women came from.

“We’re not just gumbo and shrimp and grits, we really create,” Frazier says, looking at the large, modern Black exterior of the building. “And so that creativity lends itself to anything.”

To the left is the new Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Center, which will host programs to teach current and future generations what it means to be Black and from the Lowcountry. While millennials may have grown up watching “Gullah Gullah Island” on Nickelodeon, Frazier knows there’s still so much more to teach.

Behind that sits a gigantic barn, soon to be a Black-owned business market.

Nearby is the Bateau Boat Plaza, where children can learn about the flat-bottomed boats used by the Gullah Geechee people to fish the Southern waters. The art of Bateau Boat creation is such a treasured tradition that the know-how is only passed down—not published.

“There is no blueprint you can get online for it,” Frazier says. “It’s something that’s been passed down from generation to generation.”

Frazier, also a Bluffton city councilwoman, is a fifth-generation descendant of the Gullah Geechee people—a community rooted in South Carolina and Georgia’s coastal areas and descended from enslaved West Africans. Due to their historical geographic isolation—cut off from white and even Black non-Gullah people—the community preserved its unique blend of West African cultural influences. Their language, cuisine, spirituality, accent, and agricultural practices reflect those many African roots.

“Though I’ve never touched that soil, the roots and the essence of that culture are still in me through these recipes, through the dialect, through the traditions of the sweet grass weaving and the quilting and the way that we fish and the way that we harvest, the ground and rice and stuff like that,” Frazier tells theGrio.

“They didn’t go to Africa and capture slaves. When they went to Africa, they captured horticulturists. They captured, you know, medical professionals, teachers. They captured, you know, maritime fishermen and jewelers. Like, they went and captured people who were experts in all fields and all crosses of things,” she continues.

“I think that’s even more of a testament to how formidable the culture is—that all these centuries that have gone by and all of the distance in between us and the homeland, the culture still runs through us and you can see it.”

That cultural pride is what inspired Frazier to renovate this Bluffton property into a “kunda”—the Gullah word for a multi-use space that represents a village serving all the community’s needs.

“It’s not just any one thing,” Frazier tells theGrio. “It could have been a compound of like a cluster of homes where you got aunties out here, your grandmas here, another cousin there. So this space mimics a Gullah kunda. The entire ground itself is a dedication to the culture.”

While Frazier originally envisioned Ma Daisy’s as a food truck, a conversation with restaurant entrepreneur Billy Watterson changed her path.

“I was unapologetic in uplifting Black and Gullah culture and providing equity. And he was like, ‘Listen, your voice, your work has to be elevated into a way that you’re more than just being in a food truck,’” she tells theGrio. “He saw in me what I dreamed would happen, knowing that I never had those funds because we just don’t get access to capital.”

With Watterson’s investment—and financial support from the town and the Mellon Foundation for the cultural components—Frazier’s dream began to take shape.

Now just days away from the Juneteenth grand opening, Ma Daisy’s will offer guests a firsthand taste of Gullah Geechee culture, beginning with what’s on their plates.

Ma Daisy’s menu features hot honey fried chicken, collard greens, Gullah red rice, and shrimp—dishes sure to draw guests from far and wide, made with cherished family recipes.

As Frazier prepares to welcome her first guests, she admits that bringing her dream kunda to life wasn’t always easy. There were some vocal critics who questioned building a so-called “soul food” restaurant on historic land.

Nevertheless, Frazier pushed forward. Her team has worked tirelessly, adding finishing touches like vintage wallpaper of Black women in swim caps in the restrooms and a vibrant mural tribute to Ma Daisy in the main hall.

Frazier sees the grand opening as a milestone for Black South Carolinians in Bluffton, where Black-centered businesses are rare in high-traffic areas.

“When folks come here, they’re able to see themselves represented in a way that we sadly don’t get in this area,” Frazier says. “Many of us have to travel to Atlanta, Houston, Miami, D.C. or wherever to get that type of experience. And so that was one of the reasons we were intentional about some of the pieces you’ll see once we go in the restaurant.”

The opening of Ma Daisy’s and its adjoining Gullah Geechee Cultural Center comes at a time when conversations about freedom, patriotism, and Black American history are front and center in national discourse.

It also arrives amid rising “diaspora wars” or debates about who can lay claim to Black identity and history. Frazier warns against the kind of rhetoric that divides Black communities or puts one culture above another, including her own.

“It’s unfortunate, but I understand it in a sense of there was so much displacement of our culture,” Frazier tells theGrio. “We were pitted against each other…We did lose that sense of self and kind of like connection and belonging to one another.”

Frazier hopes people will focus on what unites them—whether it’s a plate of food at Ma Daisy’s or a spiritual practice at the cultural center.

“Even though those slave ships during the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, you know, took us everywhere—whether it was Barbados, you know, or Haiti, the Americas—none of those places really existed until they were colonized. But they all had that one common thread and that was African individuals. And so because of that, we have more similarities than we do differences…So I try to encourage people to celebrate that more because that’s where our power is.”

Natasha S. Alford is the Senior Vice President of TheGrio. A recognized journalist, filmmaker, and TV personality, Alford is also the author of the award-winning book, “American Negra.” (HarperCollins, 2024) Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @natashasalford.