Soul Mates

David and Tonya Thomas bring modern soul food to downtown Baltimore.

- Jane Marion

EVEN BEFORE YOU BITE INTO YOUR OCTOPUS PO’ BOY SLIDER or a take of sip of the rummy Promised Land, you get a good sense of the story Ida B’s Table is trying to tell. There’s the hostess who oozes Southern hospitality as she greets you at the door, an indoor wrought iron “fence” that evokes the porches of the Deep South, and Baltimore artist Ernest Shaw’s portrait of the restaurant’s titular heroine and triple threat—newspaperwoman/suffragist/co-founder of the NAACP Ida B. Wells—presiding over the place. Next to her portrait is an inscription that reads: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

While shining a light on soul food, Ida B’s is also redefining the genre. Owner/chef David Thomas (formerly of Parkville’s Herb & Soul) and his wife, Tonya, offer up a new, modern take on a complicated cuisine, whose origins go back to slavery, when heavy seasoning and spices helped extract the flavor from the scraps and rations slaves received.

Chef Thomas, whose Greensboro-born grandmother, Anna Poole Thomas, was the daughter of a slave, grew up watching her toil in the kitchen as she ground her own salt, spices, and cornmeal. In many ways, this spot is built on the memories of his grandmother’s soulful cooking.