Bloodroot
Permanently Closed
Feminist bookshop & eatery with seasonal vegan-vegetarian fare
Feminist bookshop & eatery with seasonal vegan-vegetarian fare
"At nearly 2,000 miles, I-95 is the U.S’s longest north-south interstate, stretching from New Brunswick in Canada (just north of Maine) down to Miami, with plenty of East Coast stops in between. Take a detour back to the 1970s at Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Bloodroot, (located just six minutes off the highway), a vegetarian restaurant and bookstore that was started by a feminist collective in that decade. Now, the original founder, Noel Furie, still runs the business where patrons can visit for seasonal, globally inspired soups, salads, sandwiches, and hot specials, like greens-stuffed tofu pockets with rice noodles or mushroom ragu on polenta." - Vox Creative
"A feminist collective born out of a National Organization for Women meeting that produced several politically minded community cookbooks; its publications intertwined lesbian feminism, environmentalism, and food, functioning as both affirmations of shared political beliefs and tools for educating readers. The collective’s cookbooks were joyful acts of bonding and creating together, often serving as fundraisers for local groups and emphasizing collective solidarity and ethical values in food and labor." - Bettina Makalintal
"A long-standing vegetarian restaurant rooted in countercultural history, valued for its longevity and role in the development of plant-focused dining; it represents an enduring, community-oriented approach to vegetarianism rather than a fleeting trend." - Bettina Makalintal
"Founded by a small women’s collective in 1977, Bloodroot is a restaurant on a feminist mission. Its cozy, self-service dining room, decorated with political posters and lined with books offered at steep discounts, may hearken back to an earlier era, but its seasonal vegetarian menu—and the vitality of owners Selma Miriam and Noel Furie—keeps things fresh. Today, the eateries of the feminist restaurant movement have all but disappeared, but from the 1970s to the early 1990s, anywhere from 250 to 400 of them opened their doors. These restaurants, often run by lesbian collectives, were where women of the second-wave feminist movement went to meet, relax, and organize. At some restaurants—such as Chicago’s Susan B’s, a soup restaurant whose owner didn’t originally know how to make soup—food was a means to an end, a way to establish a feminist community and enable women, historically barred from eating out without male escorts, access to public space. At others, such as Bloodroot, food was the star of the show, and pivotal to politics. Like many feminist restaurants, Bloodroot has always been vegetarian. There’s a rotating menu of seasonal vegetarian, and often vegan, specials, drawing on cuisines and talented cooks from all over the world. On any given day, diners can sample Thai vegetarian “chicken,” spicy lentil soup, or a slice of the restaurant’s popular “devastation” cake, an intensely chocolatey vegan sweet with a sourdough base. Bloodroot’s political commitments go beyond the menu. To challenge the sexism of the food service industry, the founders opted to go without waitresses, and to this day diners retrieve their own orders and bus tables themselves. The very walls bear Miriam and Furie’s politics, decorated with stickers and political posters sporting slogans such as “I’ll be post-feminist in a post-patriarchy.” Decades after the idealistic ’70s, some may say it’s anachronistic for Bloodroot’s proprietors to remain so deeply committed to living out their ideal, and indeed, to sustain their commitment to fair labor practices and inexpensive prices, the owners have had to put their own money into the business. Still, for Miriam and Furie, it’s never been about doing what’s most economical, but what they feel is right. As the founders wrote in one of their early cookbooks, “Feminism is not a part-time attitude for us; it is how we live all day, everyday.” Luckily for visitors to Bloodroot, it’s also delicious." - ATLAS_OBSCURA
"Founded by a small women’s collective in 1977, Bloodroot is a restaurant on a feminist mission. Its cozy, self-service dining room, decorated with political posters and lined with books offered at steep discounts, may hearken back to an earlier era, but its seasonal vegetarian menu—and the vitality of owners Selma Miriam and Noel Furie—keeps things fresh. Today, the eateries of the feminist restaurant movement have all but disappeared, but from the 1970s to the early 1990s, anywhere from 250 to 400 of them opened their doors. These restaurants, often run by lesbian collectives, were where women of the second-wave feminist movement went to meet, relax, and organize. At some restaurants—such as Chicago’s Susan B’s, a soup restaurant whose owner didn’t originally know how to make soup—food was a means to an end, a way to establish a feminist community and enable women, historically barred from eating out without male escorts, access to public space. At others, such as Bloodroot, food was the star of the show, and pivotal to politics. Like many feminist restaurants, Bloodroot has always been vegetarian. There’s a rotating menu of seasonal vegetarian, and often vegan, specials, drawing on cuisines and talented cooks from all over the world. On any given day, diners can sample Thai vegetarian “chicken,” spicy lentil soup, or a slice of the restaurant’s popular “devastation” cake, an intensely chocolatey vegan sweet with a sourdough base. Bloodroot’s political commitments go beyond the menu. To challenge the sexism of the food service industry, the founders opted to go without waitresses, and to this day diners retrieve their own orders and bus tables themselves. The very walls bear Miriam and Furie’s politics, decorated with stickers and political posters sporting slogans such as “I’ll be post-feminist in a post-patriarchy.” Decades after the idealistic ’70s, some may say it’s anachronistic for Bloodroot’s proprietors to remain so deeply committed to living out their ideal, and indeed, to sustain their commitment to fair labor practices and inexpensive prices, the owners have had to put their own money into the business. Still, for Miriam and Furie, it’s never been about doing what’s most economical, but what they feel is right. As the founders wrote in one of their early cookbooks, “Feminism is not a part-time attitude for us; it is how we live all day, everyday.” Luckily for visitors to Bloodroot, it’s also delicious." - ATLAS_OBSCURA
