08/28/2025
Oxtail isn’t just a take out dinner. It’s an heirloom.
It’s the kind of cut that doesn’t ask to be loved, it demands patience, time, experience, and respect.
Once considered scraps, oxtails were handed off to the enslaved, to the poor, and to the people whose stories were never authored, but from those bones came broth, and from that broth comes history.
In West Africa, cooking was community. Slow pots, Layered Spices, and Meats stewed until tender. That tradition crossed the Middle Passage in memory and muscle, carried in hands that rebuilt what was stolen. In the Caribbean, enslaved people turned oxtail into stew; Rich, Gelatinous, packed with a flavour built by generations of experimentation and experience.
In the American South, especially in Gullah-Geechee kitchens, it simmered low with onion and thyme, paired with rice that tells its own story of survival, renewal, and redemption.
This is the kind of story Chef Chaz was born to tell.
A fire born not just to cook, but to honour.
Each tail kissed by the flame, each bite layered in the memory of every ancestor who once made magic out of scraps. Part nourishment. Part ritual. An indelible part of History. One that will never be erased. This journey isn’t just about food. It’s about what food remembers.
It remembers the people who were told they were nothing, and took those hand and made dishes that built nations.
It remembers the smell of your grandmother’s kitchen and the ache in your chest when you taste something that makes you feel home. It remembers how Ox Tail wasn’t just a meal. It was currency, it was survival, and in time, it became celebration.
From the Islands to the Lowcountry, from roots to rice, from loss to legacy. This is the kind of meal that lingers.
