Honeysuckle Provisions looks to past to find way into future

When Omar Tate finally opened the doors of Honeysuckle Provisions to the public on the last weekend of October, it was the last stop on one of his life’s major journeys and just the beginning of a new one altogether.

The grand opening of Honeysuckle Provisions on Saturday was the culmination of years of hard work and artistic re-invention for the married co-owners, chefs Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate. The fact that the duo also has a child on the way has only made this period of their lives even more richly defined by the concept of looking to the past to redefine what’s possible in the future.

The Afrocentric grocery and café on 48th Street in the Walnut Hill neighborhood in West Philadelphia offers “Black-made, -owned and –grown food” with the goal of “expanding the idea of Afrocentricity in food by redefining the limits of a restaurant,” per the organization.

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“This is just the beginning. As special as it already is, it can be more special. We want to do more engagements, educational engagements in our kitchen with the community. We want to deepen our relationship with producers and farmers that we’re currently working with. We’re looking to bring on more farmers. We hope to create a distribution network with this business where we have a truck, where we have a van that goes up and down the East Coast, aggregating from black farmers. We want to start a farmers market. We want to be in farmers markets. It’s not even the iceberg. We’re still in the ocean. It’s just getting colder.” - Omar Tate, Owner of Honeysuckle Provisions