Sharon Martin Tonight: The JuJu is Back at The JuJu Bag

The JuJu Is Back at The JuJu Bag

Tonight (Friday June 26) Sharon Martin is live at the JuJu Bag 7-10 PM
5363 Franklin Ave, New Orleans, LA 70122

And the JuJu is back at the JuJu Bag Cafe 

Over the years I have enjoyed and shared my enjoyment of this really special place that has brought soul and deliciousness to healthier eating. The JuJu Bag Cafe is on my regular schedule, my particular favorite dishes being the “Melted Chicken Salad” and the “Grilled Salmon Salad”... ok and on Fridays sometimes I breakdown for the Fried Catfish Plate, which is fried in as healthy a way as possible... and is actually the one of the managing owner, Tommye Myrick's concession to New Orleans tradition.

Reality TV Ain't Real

In many ways it has turned into a nightmare for the JuJu Bag which started as a cool place place to hangout with coffee after Katrina that had morphed over the years into a very special ethnocentric healthy fare dining establishment featuring culture and artifacts representing the African Diaspora. Over the years it had built a loyal clientèle who expected and accepted both which came with warm hospitality and a sense of being “family”, no matter who your momma was.

So the place has a neater look and the wires for the sound system don't show anymore, the walls have a new paint job and you can feel a sense of “design” which originally had the place feeling very un-special and blah, like a fast food joint. To Ms. Myrick's horror, in the process of the makeover the crew began throwing her collection of books and artifacts in the trash, clutter to the film crew, but an accumulation of history and culture to her. She did manage to save some, but some were permanently damaged in the process. They took the JuJu out of The JuJu Bag!

I said subject/victim of the show because of how the place was set up to look really bad so Irvine could have heavy drama for his unreal “reality” show where he rides in on a white horse and saves the day. I know, I was there the day of the filming:

• First the place was packed with a crowd three times the normal lunch business, and they all came at the same time trying to and sending orders to the small kitchen at the exact same time. The proud young staff who wanted to do so well were naturally overwhelmed, and their upset fed the cameras need for chaos. (By the way the kitchen upgrade Myrick had hoped for didn't happen, instead they reequipped the barber shop which was doing just fine with the the greater space and older unmatched but better quality chairs they had before.)

• Second, an employee's reference to a “five second rule” joke by Ms. Myrick was edited out of the context that it was a joke, allowing viewers to believe that food dropped on the floor might be reused. And how water that condensed on thawing containers was called “bacteria”. Anyone who knows Tommye Myricks standards for quality and concern for our health knows that both these were blatant misrepresentations to enhance the “drama” of the show.

• Third, a director who had been eating JuJu food all week and cleaning his plate, spits food out on camera, like it was nasty tasting, c'mon dude!

• Fourth, afterwards they pared her menu down into a few selections that you could get almost anywhere, and the really special things you could only get at the JuJu Bag (like my Melted Chicken Salad) were gone. They took the JuJu out of The JuJu Bag!

Since then, the Kinte cloth table covers are back some of the art reinstalled and I must admit I like the new more professional look, now that the JuJu feel is back as expressed in those table cloths, diaspora art and books. Oh, yeah, and the JuJu is back on the menu as well. Oh hell, damn near the entire old menu is back. 

So, the JuJu is back at the JuJu Bag, so will I and I'm sure they would like to see you back as well.

I hope you now know that the drama you saw on this “reality TV” show has nothing to do with reality.

See you tonight!

Lloyd Dennis
(a.k.a. The Love Doctor)