{"id":124518,"date":"2026-03-16T13:23:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T16:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shipping.einnews.com\/article\/899813124\/0ohQ0uKyHQ320Hyw"},"modified":"2026-03-16T13:23:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T16:23:15","slug":"nicola-blaques-freight-fried-chicken-brings-civil-war-era-legacy-of-gordonsvilles-black-women-entrepreneurs-to-san-antonio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/03\/16\/nicola-blaques-freight-fried-chicken-brings-civil-war-era-legacy-of-gordonsvilles-black-women-entrepreneurs-to-san-antonio\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicola Blaque’s Freight Fried Chicken Brings Civil War-Era Legacy Of Gordonsville’s Black Women Entrepreneurs To San Antonio"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cooking has always brought Nicola Blaque a sense of peace and connection to home. Now, she\u2019s using her latest endeavor, Freight Fried Chicken, to share those sentiments with others.<\/p>\n

A James Beard <\/a>Award nominee and recognized for her contributions to the culinary space, including the prestigious Michelin Bib Gourmand Award consecutively in 2024 and 2025 for her Jamaican restaurant, The Jerk Shack, Blaque understands the legacy infused in the flavors that fill her restaurants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born in Jamaica<\/a>, and I came here when I was 5 years old, and so for me, finding that community of Caribbean and even family, we didn\u2019t have a lot. My stepdad was in the Air Force, and so we moved every couple of years. What my mom would do is she would recreate Caribbean dishes with whatever she could find wherever we lived,\u201d Blaque recalled. \u201cAnd so I was exposed to my heritage through food, and when I joined the military, that\u2019s kind of all that I had. I joined during a time when the war had just kicked off in Iraq and Afghanistan, so cooking brought me a sense of peace, and I used it as a time to connect with my soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Her pathway to restaurateur came to her in a dream<\/h2>\n

While working as a private chef and caterer, Blaque voyaged home to Jamaica to bury her aunt, and shortly after the trip, she received a revelation of her talents\u2019 potential for greater heights.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe came to me in a dream and told me that I needed to be using my talents in a different way and to share my culture and food. I really didn\u2019t quite understand what that all meant. I was like, \u2018I\u2019ll make some jerk chicken for my clients, you know,\u2019 but she shared that with me, and just a couple of events ended up happening, and I realized, \u2018No. This is what she was talking about. I need to be sharing my culture on a national [level]\u2026 sharing what Caribbean food is.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long before The Jerk Shack became the San Antonio staple it is today. Staying in alignment with using food as a teaching opportunity, Blaque decided to do extensive research, ultimately discovering the story of a group of Black women waiter carriers in Gordonsville, Virginia, aka the \u201cFried Chicken Capital of the Universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, at Jerk Shack, we do a dry batter fried chicken, so there\u2019s no dairy, and I\u2019ve always done it like that. I\u2019m just not too big on adding extra stuff that doesn\u2019t need to be added,\u201d Blaque said. \u201cAnd then when I read about how the waiter carriers fried their fried chicken, I was like, \u2018Oh, this is meant to be.\u2019 I\u2019m from Jamaica, but these roots run deep amongst us, and I am so glad that what I was feeling, it took me back to research. Rather than feeling like, \u2018Oh, I shouldn\u2019t do this,\u2019 or whatever people feel, because now I feel proud about it, and I can share it, seeing how far fried chicken has grown across the world, and everyone has their little variation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continuing the legacy of Black women through Freight Fried Chicken<\/h2>\n

Her Freight Fried Chicken sits in a food hall in San Antonio\u2019s historic Pearl area, and is inspired by waiter carriers who were enterprising Black women in the late 1800s who sold homemade fried chicken, biscuits and pies to train passengers in Gordonsville, Virginia, turning the transit gap into economic independence and dubbing the place the \u201cFried Chicken Capital of the World,\u201d a story that is on full display for patrons to see while dining at Blaque\u2019s establishment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pearl is a very unique place,\u201d Blaque said. \u201cLast year, The Pearl had 7 million visitors, isn\u2019t that crazy? Seven million people came to this place, and I feel like I\u2019m a waiter carrier because most of the people are tourists that are coming, and writing about my fried chicken, and sharing our story, and I feel like I am rebirthing their story.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cI hear from people. I see it in their posts, and they\u2019re like, \u2018When you go to San Antonio, and you\u2019re at the Pearl, get that fried chicken.\u2019 And so the next part of our journey is we\u2019re actually opening up in the airport,\u201d adding, \u201cSo that story continues of people coming and trying the chicken, and spreading it across the world, just like them,\u201d referring to the waiter carriers.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… \u00e2\u0080\u0099s using her latest endeavor, Freight<\/span> Fried Chicken, to share those … of Black women through Freight<\/span> Fried Chicken Her Freight<\/span> Fried Chicken sits …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}