Richmond's 'Minister of Food' Serves the Bay Area Southern BBQ, California Style

For her series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse is reporting a story about food and farming from each of California’s 58 counties.

On a corner in Richmond, California, there’s a business that has celebrated the city’s Black history and Southern roots for 30 years.

The building is bright white with a hand-painted, red sign: “CJ’s BBQ and Fish.”

Inside, on a recent Monday morning, the small, efficient crew was busy prepping for the week. It was clear they’ve had years on the job, and with each other.

Mike Reddick, who’s worked at CJ’s for about five years, sharpened knives. Larry Turner trimmed, rinsed and seasoned slabs of ribs, the way he’s done for more than 15 years. Nick Gamble took inventory of the freezers.

Watching and managing it all was Gamble’s uncle, Charles Evans — CJ himself — who’s nearly 80.

“They try to keep me out of here, but they can’t,” Evans said, with a twinkle in his eye. “They can’t do what I do. I show them all how to do everything: cook, clean, repair, fix. I mean, that’s the running of the restaurant. It ain’t just one thing. You’ve got to do it all.”

CJ’s has a brick cooker inside, but Evans prefers to cook outdoors in portable pits, in a lot surrounded by a chain link fence. He pointed to an enormous one he calls “Big Black,” which he uses for busy summer days or off-site catering jobs for clients like Chevron and the University of California. He can feed up to 800 people and safely cook four different meats — ribs, chicken, links and beef — all at the same time.

Cooking outside and filling the air with a meaty aroma is great marketing.

“You’d be surprised how many people stop when they get that smell,” he said. “They smell it, you give them a taste. Bam, you got ’em.”

Inside, above the few tables and small counter, a TV plays soap operas all day long. Evans loves his stories, which is fitting of the staff’s dynamic, Reddick noted.

“We’re like a soap opera. We’re one big soap opera family. We’re all his children,” he said, laughing.

Shaking his head, Evans said, “Yeah, they’re all mine.”

The restaurant could be a soap opera, or maybe a church. While everyone worked, Gamble quietly sang hymns to himself. Evans referred to Reddick as “Rev” — for Reverend.

“The Rev knows he keeps us in order,” Evans said. “He gives us the word. He has to quote the Bible on us a couple times a day.”

They joke around a lot here, Evans said, “but I don’t play with God.”

“All my friends are preachers. I know every minister in town comes through here. But they call me the Minister of Food. They give ’em the word, and I give ’em the bread.”

Although he shares the word, too.

“I’ve got a lot of young nephews, cousins, friends, people. I preach to them,” Evans said.

That includes the guys hanging out on the street corner. Evans pointed out of the window, across the street: “They come out there and drink a little bit and do whatever they do, and then they’re gone. They don’t bother us.”

They actually look out for CJ’s, he said. The shop doesn’t get tagged, customers aren’t bothered. The one time he was burgled, the guys on the corner identified the perpetrators.

As Reddick prepped a plate of oxtails for a regular customer, Princess Crockett, Evans told him to add a little more food.

“She comes around in her little walker,” Evans said. “I try to take care of my seniors.”

“I like everything he got in there,” said Crockett, but she likes oxtails the best. Crockett has lived in Richmond since 1945, when, as a 5-year-old, she and her family arrived on a Greyhound bus from St. Louis, Missouri. She lives in senior housing around the corner and comes to CJ’s at least once a week.

“Okay, Princess, here you go, baby,” Evans said, handing Crockett her order.

Back at the pit, Turner checked on the links and put down some ribs. He adjusted the height of the metal grid where the meat cooks so it’s just the right distance from the charcoal, and he watched carefully, making sure the charcoal didn’t flame up and burn the meat.

“We cook by heat, not by fire,” he said.

It’s tiring work, raising the pit all day, but Turner said it’s worth it for the smiles he sees on the faces of customers enjoying the food. “It gives me a rush. And I love it,” he continued.

Cooking meat with smoke on a fire is something done all over the world, but in the U.S., there are lots of nuances, broad regional differences.

“North Carolina, Georgia — they got that vinegary taste. Memphis has a taste of its own. You know, with the sauces and the rubs. Mid-Texas, they have theirs in between,” Evans said. “So, I came up with California -Southern barbecue because we’re from Arkansas.”

The Evans family hails from Lewisville, population 1,280, between Hope and Texarkana.

“My grandpa bought some land in Arkansas. We still have 200 acres,” he said. “He used to grow sugar cane, make sugar cane syrup. And he grew cucumbers,” for making pickles. Evans and his family went back every summer to help with the crops.

The family moved to Richmond to work in the shipyards for World War II, Evans explained.

In the early 1940s, Henry J. Kaiser developed four ship-building facilities in the city, where nearly 750 ships were built. The population of Richmond nearly quadrupled as women, African Americans and out-of-state workers were recruited for the war effort. Evans’s father worked as a welder. His aunt had a job here, too.

“She was a Rosie the Riveter,” he said.

Evans was a “wartime baby,” one of 11 kids of Joseph and Flora Evans. His mom just died last year at the age of 105.

“Everybody in Richmond knew her. Everybody talks so highly of her. They had her funeral at the auditorium around here and packed it,” he said.

When her kids were growing up, Flora Evans made sure they knew the basics. “She taught us to cook, sew and clean,” he said. Evans learned Southern soul food recipes from her. His dad was the barbecue guy.

“He used to cook it in the backyard. He had made a pit out of an old washing machine, took the side out, took his torch, cut a hole in it. Let it smoke. He took an old refrigerator, gutted it, and put him some racks in there. They were inventive back then.”

Evans never planned on starting a restaurant. He drove for the East Bay’s public bus system.“I was driving a bus for AC Transit, routes 72P, 72M, from here to Oakland, 105 stops going and 105 stops coming back. Then I drove the school bus in the afternoon, picking up school kids.”

When a back injury ended that career, he turned to the food he’d been taught to make his whole life. He took cooking classes at Contra Costa College and a meat-cutting course in Southern California before opening a (now closed) place in Fairfield and then this spot in Richmond 30 years ago.

He said he started off small, with only two or three slabs of ribs a day. Today, he works with up to 400 slabs a week between his two locations in Richmond and Vallejo. He added fish and Southern soul food favorites. And he’s super hands-on.

“I’m not just [a] sit-down boss, I’m a working boss,” he said, prepping what he calls the “chop chop” for CJ’s macaroni salad, which he makes 10 gallons of on an average Monday.

“We call it chop chop — that’s the onion, bell pepper, celery. Chop chop! ‘Cause we’ve gotta chop it.”

Evans played with the seasonings until he was satisfied with the flavors. “I know that’s right. I know nothing’s wrong with that,” he said, sampling the batch in front of him.

This obsessiveness may be the key to the longevity of this shop.

“A lot of people actually try to change their recipes or take shortcuts,” Evans said, “but people are funny. They can tell when you change anything. They can tell when I didn’t make something.”

Reddick nodded his head in agreement.

It’s important to Evans to be consistent, to be a reliable spot in Richmond, a city that’s had a lot of good times and a lot of hard times.

“Back in the day of the wartime, everybody was bustling out here,” he said. “Shipyards, everything during the war. Everybody had a job. I’ve seen Richmond grow and go downhill and come back uphill.”

And he said, he’s seen the racial makeup of Richmond change a lot, too.

Once predominantly Black, many of Richmond’s families moved to places like Stockton, Antioch and Sacramento. Now, Richmond — and Evans’ family — is really diverse. Half of his customers are Latino, and his menu is printed in both English and Spanish.

But he also wants CJ’s to be a place the Black community with ties to Richmond can return to connect with their roots, even folks who’ve moved away.

“I’m the first place in town that they hit. ‘Charles, where’s so-and-so? Where’s Miss So-and-so? Where’s the kids at?’ I try to keep up with everybody. If I don’t know, somebody in here knows.”

After all, Evans has a reputation in Richmond as the Minister of Food.

“All my roots are here. Everybody in here knows me,” he said. “Where else I’m gonna go and get the recognition?”