Yet a little more than year after the trio founded Dodah’s Kitchen in Mount Rainier, Md., they’re already outgrowing their digs at Tastemakers Food Hall in Brookland. Their lean menu of vegan soul food (mac and cheese made with soy milk and nutritional yeast, lasagna, and meatloaf) and desserts is now available around the D.C. area, including at Mount Rainier’s Glut Food Co-Op and Mom’s and Yes! organic markets. Soon, those hungry for vegan fare in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania will also be able to find Dodah’s products available wholesale.
They’re also making plans to launch a vegan cookie line in February (peanut butter, chocolate chip, and oatmeal raisin cookies are in the works) and to open their first Dodah’s Kitchen Café within the next six months at 3801 34th Street in Mount Rainier. The neighborhood is already home to Sweet & Natural, another vegan soul food cafe about two blocks away.
“It’s a lot of work, but I’m ready,” says co-founder Janice Cheaver, 59, says of taking the company’s next step. She’s hard at work on the café’s menu, set to include her popular mac and cheese and meatloaf, and a new vegan fried chicken dish. “I just want everyone to know it’s going to be a lot of work, especially doing a café with what we’re doing right now.”
Cheaver and co-founders Edwin Lottie, 26, and Gary Feld, 29, based the company on Cheaver’s cooking, inspired by her Southern roots and religious upbringing.
When she was growing up just outside of Miami, Cheaver, the eldest of 10 children, helped her mother cook traditional soul food, including pork, fried chicken, fish, gizzards, and other dishes typically prepared in animal byproducts like lard and butter.
But when Cheaver was 15, she gave up animals for good after becoming an African Hebrew Israelite.
African Hebrew Israelites, an African-American religious community that started moving to Israel nearly 50 years ago, believe they’re descended from a lost tribe of ancient Israelites, but they do not identify as Jews. African Hebrew Israelites also take on Hebrew names to replace names they believe are rooted in slavery—Cheaver’s Hebrew name is Khermonah Baht Israel and her nickname is Dodah, which means aunt in Hebrew.
Cheaver’s conversion came after her parents’ 1974 trip to Israel, where they met members of the African Hebrew Israelites. Two years later, the family relocated to Israel to live in the African Hebrew Israel community—Cheaver remained there for 30 years, where she and some of the other women were responsible for devising its vegan recipes.
“When I got there, I was used to the cooking I was doing in Florida,” Cheaver says. “It was different, it was interesting. It was an experience, that’s all I can say.”
The recipes she created from her Israel years form the basis of the soul food Dodah’s Kitchen serves today, including the mac and cheese and meatloaf. The company, which is not affiliated with the African Hebrew Israelites, also bakes vegan desserts, including soy-free cakes, cupcakes, and cheesecakes made with organic tofu.
Cheaver, Lottie, and Feld became friends in 2013 thanks to their proximity to each other as residents of Hyattsville and Mount Rainier, and their passion for vegan food and multiculturalism. Feld is a Jewish American from New Jersey while Lottie is Afro-Panamanian with ancestry from Jamaica and Trinidad. Lottie comes from a business and engineering background while Feld spent time working as a freelance marketer in Maryland politics.
“We’re an example of really something that’s a grassroots local,” Feld says of Dodah’s Kitchen. “A lot of times you hear ‘local’ or something grassroots or whatever, but it’s not really that. We are really that. We are friends from diverse backgrounds.”
The idea to start Dodah’s Kitchen came from Lottie, who leads the company’s baking and cooking operations, directs product development, and sets the vision for the company. The self-taught baker originally learned his craft when he was growing up in the Panama Canal Zone—he helped his mother make wedding cakes.
“She was a single mother of six—that’s how she held us together,” Lottie says.
Feld is responsible for the “non-sexy stuff” in the company, including marketing and label-making. The men prefer to work in the background and let all the glory go to Cheaver and her recipes.
“It was because of my experience with vegan food and having recipes and stuff that we decided that we wanted to do something together,” she says.
Her version of soul food is much healthier than its meat- and dairy-laden counterpart, without compromising taste, Feld says, which helps the trio end the stigma about blah-tasting vegan food.
“The reason we did this is because it just tastes really good,” he says. “Vegans get a bad rap. You think of these things that taste like chalk or are not filling. This is not that.”
This story has been updated.
