A&C

Black-owned eateries in Eugene

Beyond Black History Month, continue supporting Black-owned businesses through these local restaurants, food trucks and coffee shops.

BY EM CHAN• TWITTER @CATCHUPTOEMILY

Tony Brown has owned and operated Tony’s BBQ for over 20 years. Tony’s BBQ is open for business and enforcing safety precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The restaurant can be found on Highway 99 in Eugene, Ore., Feb. 24, 2021. (Madi Mather/Emerald)

Black History Month brings awareness not just to the Black activists and leaders who have had an impact on the country, but to the individuals and organizations in our local communities as well. It may just be one month long, but supporting Blackowned initiatives must be something we do year-round in order to make a difference.

One of the overlooked spheres of Black influence is in the food industry, so I set out to find the Black-owned eateries in Eugene. From superb soul food to traditional African food and more, here are the businesses you can support.

Equiano Coffee

Since 2013, Equiano has been selling specialty coffee that’s roasted in Eugene. Its coffee beans are single-variety and sustainably sourced from small farms in Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala, Vietnam and beyond. Okon Udosenata, owner and coffee roaster, has won numerous awards for his coffee roasting. The location also has a tasting room for patrons to try different roasts, but due to COVID-19 restrictions this space remains closed. You can buy coffee grounds online and in-person.

BBQ by Tony

Tony’s has been serving Texas-style barbeque in Eugene since 1997 and continues to serve the classics. The restaurant has won dozens of awards for its amazing signature dishes. From beef brisket, tri-tip and pulled pork to BBQ chicken meals or sandwiches, there’s something hearty on the menu for any meat eater. If you’re just looking for its signature sauce, you can purchase a one-gallon jug of it.

IRIE Jamaican Kitchen

As the only Jamaican food offered in Eugene, Irie’s flavorful dishes are something you shouldn’t skip. It is family owned and operated, and you can find its food at the Saturday Market, its cart on 13th Avenue or you can order catering. The food is flavorful and a great value with large and filling servings. One of the restaurant’s standout offerings are its fried plantains, which are sweet and melt perfectly in your mouth.

Makeda’s Cuisine

cart that opened up in October. Paolos and Eden Kid, the food truck’s owners, wanted to introduce the community to Ethiopian and Eritrean food. Ethiopian and Eritrean food are very similar, with only a few ingredient differences due to varied climates between the two countries. If you’ve tried Addis Eithiopian, you’ll definitely enjoy the slight differences that Makeda’s offers — plus, Makeda’s serves sambusas: crispy, triangular shaped, fried pastry pockets filled with savory filling.

Noisette Pastry Kitchen

Noisette Pastry Kitchen is a classic stop for anyone with a hankering for bread or pastries for breakfast. Known for its breakfast pastries, the restaurant usually sells out of them before noon. Noisette sources many of its ingredients locally and serves and sells Equiano coffee as well. From bread and traditional European pastries to custom order cakes, Noisette has something sweet (or savory!) for any and everyone.

Once Famous Grill

Situated in the BeerGarden, Once Famous Grill has been run by Keith Lewis, former Ducks football and NFL player, since 2016. Serving food with “a southern flair,” staples of the food truck include deep fried seafood and sandwiches. From classics like surf & turf, deep fried shrimp and catfish, to foot-long philly cheesesteak, cheeseburgers and more, you’ll definitely be hooked on the high quality and large proportions of every order.

Stewart’s Soul Fusion

This soul fusion food truck opened in mid-August, serving both classic soul food with — you guessed it — a twist. The eatery has a rotating selection of barbeque sandwiches and traditional soul food including mac & cheese, candy yams and cornbread. It has “Soul Sundays” every weekend when they serve Soul Plates, with patrons choosing one protein and two sides.

For right now, some other eateries have chosen to remain closed because of the pandemic. These include the Taco Intrusion food truck, One Bad Dawg food truck and Straight Outta Soul Food, which is in the process of renovating its brick and mortar. One Bad Dawg is hoping to reopen in the spring if conditions have improved, while Taco Intrusion and Straight Outta Soul remain closed indefinitely.

A LOOK AT UO’S COVID-19 RESPONSE, A YEAR INTO THE PANDEMIC

UO FACULTY, ADMINISTRATORS AND STUDENTS SHARE SUCCESSES, MISTAKES AND LESSONS LEARNED FROM A YEAR OF DEALING WITH COVID-19 ON CAMPUS

BY SALLY SEGAR • TWITTER @SALLYSEGAR

“We need to get ready.”

Andre Le Duc, the University of Oregon’s chief resilience officer, emailed his colleagues back in Eugene on Jan. 25, 2020. He was reviewing the incident management program at University of California, San Francisco, when the people he was meant to speak with — several lead infectious disease experts — were called away to deal with a new global virus.

Three days later, Le Duc came back to Eugene and began preparing UO to tackle the same virus. A week before, the U.S. had reported its first case of the novel coronavirus, nearly a month after Wuhan, China, first reported a cluster of pneumonia cases.

The World Health Organization announced the name COVID-19 on Feb. 11, 2020, and the new virus quickly spread across the globe. Over a year later, as of Feb. 28, 2021, the world has seen over 113 million cases and nearly 2.5 million deaths from the coronavirus, according to WHO.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly made its mark on our community. Lane County has seen over 10,000 cases and 126 deaths from the virus, and the University of Oregon has had 1,499 students and employees test positive since June 2020, according to UO’s COVID-19 case tracking website.

Back in January 2020, when COVID-19 had not yet reached Oregon, UO suspended all university travel to China and started working to bring the few UO students there back to the U.S.

UO President Michael Schill at the time said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “has classified the potential public health threat as ‘high’ and notes that the current global spread of the virus is likely to cause a pandemic.”

Later that day, the Oregon Health Authority announced Oregon’s first COVID-19 case. There have been 154,878 cases and 2,206 deaths across Oregon since, at the time of print, according to the agency.

UO moved winter term final exams and the first three weeks of spring term to Zoom. One week later, UO elected for an entirely remote spring term.

In April, Schill planned to have students return to campus for an in-person fall term. The school considered options like limiting the number of people in residence halls and offices, intensely cleaning university buildings and testing students and employees.

But the pandemic continued through the summer, and UO announced in August that most of fall term would be remote, though first-year students would still live in the dorms while being tested for COVID-19. Winter and spring terms would also be primarily remote, though with some hybrid options. In Schill’s message announcing that spring term would mix remote, online and in-person classes, he shared his confidence in returning to predominantly in-person classes in fall 2021.

Le Duc, head of the IMT, has been leading the university’s response to the pandemic. Before the pandemic, the team consisted of about 35 individuals who met monthly, reviewed plans and practiced exercises for planned and unplanned scenarios together, including commencement and the Olympic trials. Currently, the IMT includes almost 250 faculty from disciplines across the university.

Because the core IMT team members trust each other and train together, UO saved a lot of time at the start, Le Duc said. The members have muscle memory that allows them to activate quickly to address the community’s needs.

“It doesn’t matter how much money you have, how many resources,” Le Duc said in an interview. “You can never buy time. So you always want to be looking at how agile you can be, how fast you can move to really maximize your time.”

Benjamin Clark, an associate professor of public administration at UO and co-executive director of UO’s Institute for Policy Research and Engagement, has been working within the IMT’s community response branch. From his experience working within IMT, Clark said UO’s response to the virus has followed a public health-oriented approach.

“They have taken a very proactive and measured response using science as the basis of their decisionmaking,” he said. “While no response to this pandemic has been perfect, I feel very confident in the leadership we have at the university.”

Clark said university administration has been responsive to IPRE’s work, and UO has taken his research and used it to identify necessary resources to scale up its testing and contact tracing efforts. The institute has also identified target spots on campus and in the community for COVID-19 messaging. Ellen Peters is the director of UO’s Center for Science Communication Research and an expert on science communication. Early on in the pandemic, Peters observed that the UO communications team wasn’t trained in science communication, and she didn’t really like their COVID-19 messaging. So, with the university’s blessing, she organized a team of faculty from across UO colleges to come up with high-level strategic advice for the UO communications team. This group, which she calls the Faculty Engagement Team, eventually set up a weekly consulting hour for groups working with coronavirus communications. UO used the team’s advice pretty extensively, Peters said.

“I don’t know of any other university around the country where people have been as willing to listen to faculty expertise about things that matter,” she said.

Melissa Graboyes, a professor of African and medical history at UO, has been involved with Peters’ engagement team. Graboyes doesn’t think UO has meaningfully integrated its faculty expertise and

(National Cancer Institute/Unsplash)

I don’t know of any other university around the country where people have been as willing to listen to faculty expertise about things that matter.” ELLEN PETERS CENTER FOR SCIENCE RESEARCH COMMUNICATION DIRECTOR

(Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash)

input throughout the pandemic. SEIU union leadership addressing risks to employees them encourage students to get tested.

In late February 2020, Graboyes was on leave in working on campus. She also ran an anonymous The university is working with Lane County to help Milan, Italy, one of the first regions outside of China survey of over 2,300 UO community members in plan mass vaccination sites, Le Duc said, which will with recognized sustained community transmission June, finding mixed opinions and expectations for the include one site at the Lane County Fairgrounds, of COVID-19. Because of her early experience with fall 2020 term. one at Lane Community College and one at Autzen quarantine measures, she felt that everyone in the “I think that is a really alarming way for a university Stadium. UO is also working to establish a “vaccine U.S. was “massively underestimating the threat and to be run in the midst of a really difficult time, where corps” of students to work at those sites. massively underestimating the impact it was going to you want to be grounded in good, clear, transparent Looking back, “hindsight is 2020,” Le Duc said. have on all aspects of life.” conversation and communication,” she said. “It feels He wishes UO could have moved faster and pushed

In an open letter to Le Duc and the UO community, very shortsighted to me.” its community partners — including Lane County she and two other UO professors in Italy at the time Graboyes sees other areas where the university Public Health — to integrate sooner, but since the IMT urged the university in March to shift to online can improve on its COVID-19 response, including activated in January, there wasn’t much room to go classes ahead of expanding UO’s faster, he said. diagnosed cases in Monitoring and Le Duc said the IMT is constantly looking to review the Eugene area. Graboyes said I think that is a really alarming Assessment Program for testing, preparing what it did well and what it could improve. He’s especially proud of UO’s ability to move from just an she was met with resistance by university way for a university to be run in the midst of a really difficult time, for a vaccine initiative, working to communicate idea to a fully operational testing laboratory — the MAP lab — in just six months. This type of facility could take up to two years normally, he said. administration for where you want to be grounded more effectively Le Duc also wants to improve peer-to-peer starting a public conversation about the virus, in good, clear, transparent conversation and communication, about the virus and having a more open conversation with communication about the virus within the UO community. “An email, a message, an article isn’t enough,” he said. “We need actual engagement.” and even now, she doesn’t think UO it feels very shortsighted to me.” the community. Graboyes and Alfred said UO has kept students informed about COVID-19, especially early in the pandemic, but is considering all faculty input. MELISSA GRABOYES Peters both want to see UO specifically students often neglect to read emails and updates from the university. She’d like to see UO develop

“Sometimes when PROFESSOR OF AFRICAN AND MEDICAL HISTORY target messages messages that students are more likely to read — even we did give feedback to people who are communication from professors would help, she said. on the university’s hesitant about Alfred said she cut UO a lot of slack last spring in response — and I count myself in this category — we getting the vaccine. terms of moving slow or waiting to make decisions were criticized for it, and [they] said that we were not Peters said she wants to see UO set up a way for regarding remote learning. Peters agrees that there being team players and we should keep our criticisms people to get vaccinated on campus if the vaccine isn’t much anyone could do with such imperfect to ourselves,” Graboyes said. supply gets large enough. information.

The trio wrote a general letter to the Oregon Addy Alfred, secretary of Student Health Advocacy “Have they always gone as fast as I wanted them and Eugene communities on March 12 about how for ASUO, said she also wants to see UO offer to? No,” Peters said. “Do I see ways that they might they should prepare for the virus, and Graboyes vaccinations to students. Alfred appreciates that UO have been able to go faster? I don’t know.” independently wrote a letter to UO leadership and offers testing for the community but would like to see