“We wanted to create a place where women could feel happy and safe, and even now, we have young women who tell us how struck they are by the impact it has had on them,” says Noel Furie, one of the two remaining original members of the collective, which began with four women. “Who knew we would be here for 47 years?”
For Furie, now 79, and Selma Miriam, 89, Bloodroot’s co-owners, the goal was to build a self-sustaining feminist community that would embrace global cuisine and where women, lesbian and straight, could feel supported. The concept appears to have worked as today’s diners eat platters of housemade injera and misir wat beneath hundreds of vintage photographs of women, picked up at yard sales and donated by friends, that line the walls. A handwritten notice reads: “Because all women are victims of fat oppression and out of respect for women of size, we would appreciate your refraining from agonizing aloud over the calorie count in our food. (Ask to see ‘Shadow on a Tightrope’ or ‘The Obsession.’)” On the other side of the dining room, you will, indeed, find these feminist books and others on the shelves of the bookstore, a lesser focus now in the age of online booksellers.
Even so, it’s that business diversity that Alex Ketchum, assistant professor at McGill University’s Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, sees as key to Bloodroot’s longevity. “It’s a volatile industry that requires multiple streams of revenue to survive,” Ketchum says. “Feminist restaurants often included bookstores and performance spaces, built networks for artists and worked to ensure that employees were compensated with a living wage,” she says. But of the 200-plus feminist restaurants, cafes and coffeehouses that opened across the United States during the 1970s and ’80s, as identified by Ketchum when researching her 2022 book, “Ingredients for Revolution,” just one remains: Bloodroot.
The inspiration for such an enterprise began with Mother Courage, a women’s liberation-centered restaurant widely acknowledged as the first of its kind when it launched in New York City in 1972, just six years before Bloodroot opened its doors. Women were still unable to get a business loan without male co-signers — that would take until 1988, when the Women’s Business Ownership Act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan — so such ventures necessarily involved a shared vision and often personal loans, between women, whether they were fellow activists, friends or lovers.
These spaces were pivotal to women in the early years of both the gay rights movement following the 1969 Stonewall riots and the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966. At Mother Courage, small acts such as pouring wine for women to sample and placing the check equidistant from male and female diners were surprisingly revolutionary. Bloodroot, too, struck a chord among its own local female clientele: “Women would come in and whisper about their issues,” Furie recalls. “I feel very honored to be a part of that.”
Ketchum sees a modern evolution of the original concept: “There’s changing terminology now, because we don’t really have political feminism anymore. There are places today that tend to be queer and not tied to the idea of gender. The feminist restaurants were tied to these networks by national periodicals and typically most accountable to their local communities, while today’s businesses are held accountable by a broader international audience — people who may never have even been to these places. It brings a different kind of pressure to the structure.”
Furie sees that evolution herself but is quick to note it was the feminist movement that opened the door to many legal rights for both women and LGBTQ+ communities. “The words ‘feminist’ and ‘lesbian’ seem to be out of style now,” she says, “but we love them as an expression of strength. We didn’t follow any rules for women and we were successful, and we think that example shows that you can follow your values and survive, no matter what community you identify with.”
The route to both feminism and plant-based cooking came to Furie and Miriam in different ways. Miriam refers to her own mother as having been a “rabid feminist and a Jewish atheist. The food in feminism came from an ethical culture and anti-religious beliefs — because I was raised with feminism, it was easy for me to understand that food culture.”
Furie, on the other hand, was raised by a mother with no interest in feminism. “She was very into women being beautiful,” Furie says, “and I had no language to describe that discomfort. Feminism gave me the language.” Among the photos of women on Bloodroot’s walls is one of Furie as a little girl, frowning in a decidedly feminine dress. “That dress is what made me a feminist,” she says. “My mother made me wear it and I absolutely hated it, but I had no choice but to wear it, no opportunity to say no.”
Each woman found herself in a traditional heterosexual marriage before becoming involved in conscious-raising groups within the lesbian and feminist movements, providing the catalyst to come out as lesbians, divorce and follow new paths. “It was a jump off the cliff, like Thelma and Louise,” Furie says. “The thing about Bloodroot is that we just jumped out of the culture at large, right out of the patriarchy. We were desperate, so we just left our lives as we knew them and created this whole new life.”
The Bloodroot Collective initially pursued opening a bookstore alone, but Miriam’s interest in cooking led to the idea of opening a restaurant in tandem. The building they found, a former machine shop overlooking picturesque Brewster Cove in Bridgeport’s Black Rock neighborhood, provided a rambling canvas for bringing their vision to life. They built an open window between the kitchen and the dining room, and implemented a self-serve policy so that employees did not have to be dependent upon tips for income. Leading feminists visited regularly, including Audre Lorde, who debuted such works there as the famous essay “My Mother’s Mortar.” A women-only night every Wednesday drew women from across the area, lining up outside to get in.
The women-only night eventually died,” Miriam says, “It was just suddenly out of style. But then there were men coming in pushing strollers, and that astonished me. There was a time when you just never would have seen that.”
At the center of it all, Miriam and Furie were determined to serve thoughtfully prepared vegetarian food in rhythm with what was seasonally available, while learning from and celebrating the food cultures of the women working with them at Bloodroot: Jamaican, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Korean, Honduran. Miriam was committed to also sharing that knowledge, saying now, “If someone wants to know how to make something, then I’m going to teach them.” That belief led to the publication of Bloodroot’s first cookbook in 1980, “The Political Palate,” which the collective created under its own imprint after a publishing company expressed interest in the book — but only if the title was changed. “The early books were considered very radical,” Miriam says with a chuckle.
Indeed, the collective did not shy away from expressing its views, writing, “We are feminists, that is, we recognize that women are oppressed by patriarchy — the rule of the fathers — and we commit ourselves to rebellion against that patriarchy. … Our food is vegetarian because we are feminists. We oppose the keeping and killing of animals for the pleasure of the palate just as we oppose men controlling abortion or sterilization.”
Lagusta Yearwood was 21 in 2000, when she started working at Bloodroot. “When I first got there, I thought it would be this Earth-mama-’60s-granola-thing, but it was so much more complex,” she says. “When you are unapologetic about who you are, it draws people to you. These are two people who have taken any kind of privilege they’ve had in life and really used it to benefit thousands of others.” Yearwood, who lives in Upstate New York, worked with Bloodroot over the course of 10 years, including writing two cookbooks with the collective and gaining experience that she used to open Lagusta’s Luscious (a name she says was coined by Miriam), a vegan artisanal chocolate company with two locations.
“Bloodroot is such an institution,” Yearwood says, “and Selma and Noel were so open and giving with all of their knowledge and life beliefs.”
Perhaps inspired by Yearwood’s passion for veganism, Furie and Miriam found themselves experimenting more with vegan options, transitioning Bloodroot to a plant-based menu. “We already had great vegetarian food,” Miriam says, “but when the pandemic struck, we stopped serving brunch, and that allowed us to get rid of eggs entirely from the menu.”
The menu choices on any given night might be as varied as Cambodian kanji made with rice, potatoes and cashews; Jamaican jerk seitan with coconut rice; and a creamy mushroom walnut paté served with potato-rye bread. A large glass jar on the kitchen counter contains brandied fruit that has been continually replenished with fruit and sugar since the restaurant opened — yes, 47 years and counting — to spoon over homemade cashew-based ice cream.
Carolanne Curry, a longtime friend, sits at the large wooden desk by the front door, welcoming diners on a recent Thursday night. She explains the self-serve system to newcomers and catches up with returning customers visiting the area after a long absence. Gesturing to the eclectic array of artwork, handmade quilts and stacks of feminist literature that make up the cozy atmosphere, Curry says, “This place is like a kaleidoscope. You look at it and you see one thing. Then you shift everything just slightly, and you can see something new.”
Furie says she thinks the supercharged estrogen in the restaurant’s atmosphere is what makes it a comfortable place where people keep returning, even though it is a bit off the beaten track. Despite the divisiveness so pervasive in today’s political dialogue, Bloodroot prides itself on being a safe haven for many viewpoints. “Anybody who wants to be here is welcome here,” she says. “I used to think everyone had to think like me, but I’ve changed my mind about that.”
For Miriam, Bloodroot is, perhaps, her lifeblood, even as she now spends less time in the kitchen and more time chatting with customers while sitting with Gloria Steinem — the cat, that is. “There are people who come in with their 3-year-old and say, ‘I came here when I was 3, and now I’m back with my child,’ and I think how amazing that we had that impact, without even planning it. We followed our political and social beliefs, and had an appreciation for the earth and the animals — all the things that fall under the broad umbrella of feminism. There are so many threads to feminism, but here at Bloodroot, we do respect and love life.”
