The first thing you need to know about the “Hemings & Hercules” dinner at Post and Beam in Los Angeles is that it’s an eight-course tour de force of open-air, wood-fire, cast-iron cookery dedicated to two of America’s first celebrity chefs—James Hemings and Hercules Posey.
The second thing you need to know is that both men were African American slaves owned by two of our Founding Fathers—George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
I first became aware of this little-known aspect of America’s culinary history when I watched the third episode (“Our Founding Chefs”) of the Netflix series “High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America.” It introduced a pair of Los Angeles chefs (Brian Dunsmoor and Martin Draluck) who were dedicated to providing an intimate dining experience that could combine the story of “Hemings and Hercules” with a succession of sumptuous dishes prepared in the blazing-hot, open-hearth “hard-cooking” tradition of early America.
Originally conceived in 2019 at Hatchet Hall (on the city’s west side), the dinner has now found a new home at Post and Beam in the Crenshaw District, where it’s being presented by the restaurant’s co-owners and chefs, Draluck and John Cleveland. It’s the result of two tracks of research: one into the lives of the two men, the other into the cultural anthropology of American Colonial cookbooks and cooking techniques. In fact, says Draluck, many of the recipes that Martha Washington took credit for in her famous cookbook were almost certainly originated by Posey.
