House of Soul, Ethel leaving Five Points
By Judy DeHaas, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Monday, January 28, 2008
Photos by Judy DeHaas © The Rocky
Ethel Allen gets a huge hug goodbye from longtime patron Reggie Moore on the last Sunday that her restaurant, Ethel's House of Soul, will be open.
Beth Moore, who has worked with Ethel Allen for the past eight years, serves up some of Ethel's home cooking on Sunday. In the foreground is a veggie plate with turnip greens, black-eyed peas, corn, yams, cornbread, onions, jalapenos, rice and gravy.
"There comes a time in your life that you have to make a change, and this is my time," says Ethel Allen, 75, as she stirs a pot of black-eyed peas atop an antique stove in the small kitchen of her Five Points restaurant, Ethel's House of Soul. "It is time for me to get outta town and lie down somewhere."
Today is the last day the landmark restaurant will be open.
On Sunday, people streamed in to give Ethel their best wishes or to pray with her and have one more serving of her famous peach cobbler, her smothered pork chops or her turkey and stuffing.
"I am from Texas, and this is really the only soul food restaurant (in Denver) that reminds me of home," says Michael Turner. "I am really hating that she is closing, but I know how it is. She has earned a break."
Customers waiting for their orders lined up along the pink Formica countertop, swiveling on the red vinyl stools as a basketball game blared from a television.
The talk this day in Ethel's carries the same theme: "Where will people go now on Sundays after church for their noon meal?" "What kind of cooking is the new owner going to offer?" "How will this affect the rest of the Five Points neighborhood?"
Those questions will be answered soon enough, but Ethel will not be waiting around to find out. She's worked since she was 8 years old, when she started picking cotton in the fields of Mississippi.
Indeed, 67 years later, no one argues that she has a rest coming to her - but at least a few loyal customers begged her to reconsider, just for one more year.
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