The best part about Nickey McKnight’s southern-style crab legs, shrimp and crawfish at The Boujie Crab? Upon first glance, one might be tempted to say it’s the pristine presentation, rivaled only by the elegantly decked-out restaurant’s interior. Upon first taste, many would answer it’s their signature homemade boujie butter batter that soaks many of the seafood dishes.
Those people would be wrong. The best part about McKnight’s New Orleans-inspired Creole creations is that they’re here in Long Beach.
The Boujie Crab, along with over 20 other Black-owned restaurants in the city, will be spotlighted in Long Beach’s second annual Black Restaurant Week from Jan. 22-29. This year’s lineup has tripled the amount of businesses from last year.
The weeklong event is organized by Long Beach Food and Beverage, a nonprofit created by founder and Executive Director Terri Henry in order to support restaurants in the city.
“I just feel like when people are getting together over food, their differences are more likely to just kind of disappear,” Henry said. “I mean, breaking bread with anybody from all walks of life, I think you find out you have more similarities than you do differences and that’s part of the objective as well.”
The nonprofit has also hosted Long Beach Burger Week and Long Beach Taco Week in previous years. Henry said the idea for Black Restaurant Week was brought to her by a Long Beach business owner following the success of Burger Week. The event was ushered in last year with two weeks on nonstop TV appearances and promotion for the businesses participating.
“I’m hoping that people want to keep the same energy that they did last year and come out and participate and especially support our independent restaurants,” McKnight, owner of The Boujie Crab, said. “A lot of the restaurants didn’t make it so hopefully if they are back open, this will give them a chance to meet new customers and be a part of the community and what’s going on.”
McKnight stepped out of her comfort zone when she unexpectedly came across The Boujie Crab location, a former pizza parlor for over 30 years. As a financial consultant at the time, she pitched the location to a client and didn’t receive interest. A lifetime of cooking traditional Southern dishes with the women in her family inspired her to take up the project on her own.
McKnight was lucky enough to have her business grow “exceedingly well” during the pandemic, which she attributes to word of mouth from her customers and a successful social media presence. Her Louisiana roots gave her a natural interest in making her restaurant a seafood boil spot, and the glamorous pink diamond tuft walls and glittery decorations prompted her to switch the usual plastic baggy presentation for decadent, full plates and towering, tasty martini glasses filled with boujie buttery seafood.
“I didn’t want to make it messy with sauce being in a bag,” McKnight said. “I wanted you to come in and sit down and eat so based on the decor, I wanted the food to match the decor so everything was boujie and then we came up with the name boom—everything started coming together.”
The Boujie Crab will have a happy hour at their location on Sunday, Jan. 22 to kick off the week as well as specials on their seafood boils, starter platter and signature mocktails throughout the week. The restaurant has added crawfish, shrimp and lobster pasta bowls to their menu until Jan. 29.
Residents can also try The Boujie Crab’s latest trademarked creation: the Chartini, a classy take on a charcuterie board served in a martini glass with crackers, slices of meat, cheese, fruit and fresh flowers.
While McKnight’s boujie, buttery delicacies are one of a kind in Long Beach’s food scene, she is one of many restaurant owners who are drawing inspiration from their childhood meals and adding their own twist. Black Restaurant Week puts a focus on the Southern-inspired recipes and cooking methods becoming more common in the city.
While exploring the cuisine in Long Beach, residents can enjoy Chicago-style popcorn from Popcorn World, Nigerian cooking from Sumptuous African, Texas-inspired homemade spicy crackers from Smokin’ Crackers, vegan donuts from Devi’s Donuts & Sweets, soul food from Georgia’s Restaurant, Caribbean dishes from Cheri’s Caribbean Kitchen and much, much more.
“I know in Long Beach we have a great amount of families and individuals originating from the south and they just look for that homestyle cooking or something different,” McKnight said.
The desire for home-cooked meals rich with family memories was a dream turned reality for Sahadia Auguste, co-owner of Cheri’s Caribbean Kitchen. The pop-up and catering business is one of Long Beach’s new businesses that started in 2022, first operating Mondays and Tuesdays out of an already established storefront and now gracing the city’s food scene at various pop-ups and events.
Cheri’s Caribbean Kitchen serves plates of oxtails, Haitian carnitas, rice and peas, jerk chicken and other Caribbean dishes. For Black Restaurant Week, they will be having deals on their most popular dishes of macaroni and cheese, oxtails and curry goat burritos.
“Caribbean food is not very prevalent in the Long Beach area or really most of Southern California at all,” Auguste said. “So we want to let people know that we are offering the option and giving them a taste of what we have to offer so that in the future they would consider us for catering orders.”
Auguste and her partner Andrew Boven are both from South Florida, where Caribbean cuisine can be found on nearly every street. After moving to California, they craved the foods they left behind and often joked about opening their own Caribbean restaurant to fill the void. When Boven had a dream depicting exactly that vision, Auguste felt they had to honor it.
“Me and my family are Haitian American and Haitians, we take our dreams very seriously. So when he told me about that dream, I knew that we had to make it happen,” Auguste said.
Their leap of faith has paid off so far, despite the struggle to find a permanent location. Cheri’s Caribbean Kitchen is leaning into the uncertainty and focusing on what matters most: the flavorful creations and recipes they hope will have that unmistakable “homey feel.”
Auguste is aware of the challenges that come with a brick-and-mortar location, and said she hopes Black Restaurant Week will help Cheri’s connect with other business owners so they can learn from their peers.
“I think that most Black restaurateurs are—especially in the Long Beach area—it’s a bit of a gamble,” Auguste said. “We’re taking a gamble, taking a leap of faith and hoping that we’re able to make something of a dream that we’ve had and such an event is really helpful to that because it helps us see that the interest goes beyond what we had envisioned and that there’s actually a network of others who have the same or similar vision and people outside of that network who are actually willing to support us.”
While the goal is to drive sales up at local Black-owned restaurants, there will also be a handful of pop-ups throughout the week for residents to explore the wide range of businesses participating, including online businesses, food trucks, caterers and brick and mortar locations. On Jan. 26, The Cove Hotel will be hosting 13 businesses at its pop-up from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
For a full list of restaurants and businesses participating in the second annual Long Beach Black Restaurant Week, visit blackrestaurantweeklb.com.
