Beer, pound cake, paella: Inspiring stories from Bay Area Black food entrepreneurs

Less than three years have passed since we faced one of our country’s most significant civil rights movements of the past half-century. In 2020, publications like ours crafted and have since maintained lists of Black-owned restaurants and other food and drink businesses to support throughout the Bay Area, not just during Black History Month but all year round.

Here are the stories of three that have launched in the past five years that you may not be familiar with: DeeLee Cakes in San Jose, Concord Tap House in Concord and Oyo in Pleasanton.

DeReath Times, DeeLee Cakes

There are so many things that Mary Lee Cage passed along to her granddaughter, DeReath Times, of San Jose. Her baking. Her work ethic — “A tub has to stand on its own legs,” she’d say — and her desire to help Black women “better themselves so they can better their children.”

“My grandmother was amazing,” says Times, a Bay Area native and founder of DeeLee Cakes, a cottage pound cake business. “She was my hero. She was also my champion.”

Cage passed away in 2005, but her legacy lives on in the dense, buttery cakes Times bakes and sells in and around the South Bay. The pandemic lockdown sent her into the kitchen in March 2020. By May, with the help of friends and her son, Times was selling her Bundt pan cakes, which start at $40 and come in flavors like sweet potato and red velvet, to friends of friends.

“My brother-from-another-mother posted the cakes on Facebook, and the responses were ‘OMG, yes’ and ‘Oh hell yes,’” Times says. “Those kinds of blessings keep coming.”

This month, her busiest ever, brought orders from Netflix and from the nonprofit 100 Black Men of America, which asked for a dozen 12-inch round sweet potato pound cakes. The cake is Times’ signature and her bestseller. It has warming spice flavors and is topped with butter-crusted pecans. (In the summer, she makes a lemonade pound cake that sells out quickly.)

“You rarely meet someone who doesn’t like pound cake or have a grandmother who made it for them,” she says. “It reminds people of down-home Sunday dinners and Southern barbecues.”

A legal assistant by day, Times spends her nights improving on the recipes Miss Mary left behind. She guards those closely, but follows her grandmother’s advice to “make it better” by using upgraded ingredients, including milk, flour and farm-fresh eggs. She credits Nothing Bundt Cakes for resurrecting the old-fashioned dessert, but her twists, including a chocolate “21 And Over” version topped with Bailey’s glaze, are unique.

Times is booked through early March, but will resume taking orders soon after via her website, www.deeleecakes.com. She hopes to open a brick and mortar someday to teach Black women how to bake. Her dream is to start a women’s center that would be tied to the bakery, providing jobs, counseling and other resources to women of color.

“My grandmother taught me how to get back up,” she says. “I want to do that for other women.”

Myles Burks, Concord Tap House

You might say Concord’s Myles Burks grew up in the business. He was all of 9 when he started working alongside his dad, Keith, making Louisiana-style barbecue at BJK’s Rib Factory in Bethel Island and catering for the 49ers and Raiders.

“I was the bus boy, the host, whatever was needed,” says Burks, co-owner of Concord Tap House and Frickin’ Fried, a soul food and fry house, also in Concord. “The mentality of working came easy. My father implemented that in me.”

Keith Burks passed away in June from heart failure, but not before instilling in Myles, 22, the importance of serving his community and making every customer feel like they’re a regular.

“He is very much like his dad in that he always has a smile on his face, treats everyone equally and is a gregarious, positive-minded human,” says Tony Fredericks, another Concord Tap House co-owner with his wife, Valerie.

Burks is filling his father’s shoes with grace and grit, working behind the bar five nights a week and earning the nickname Captain Cavalry for every last-minute grocery run or unexpected beer delivery. Concord Tap House opened in 2018 in midtown and offers 24 rotating taps of California craft beer and a menu of suds-friendly pub food.

When he’s not at the tap house, Burks and his mom, Cathy, the fourth co-owner, are working to bring Keith’s various projects to light. Of utmost importance is Chalk It Up, a Hayward pool hall that was destroyed by a 2-alarm fire in 2020. Burks is rebuilding, adding ping pong tables and a billiards room and expanding the kitchen.

“I want to elevate the food with shareable tapas, make it an experience,” he says.

His next project — this one, his very own — will be a family-friendly destination for roller skating and miniature golf in central Contra Costa County. The large-scale entertainment venue will serve food, drinks and offer something most 22-year-olds probably don’t think about.

“I want to create jobs in my community,” he says.

Maurice and Samuel Dissels, Oyo

“We needed to create a menu from a land — and expand,” says Dissels, whose eatery is an homage to his grandmother and the flavors of his Guyanese heritage. “We’d have to educate some, and others would just come in and be excited, because they’ve had jerk chicken or street food doubles before.”

And that’s exactly what happened. Now in its fourth year, Oyo not only weathered the pandemic but has evolved into a sophisticated yet casual gathering place for exotic flavors you otherwise won’t find in the Tri-Valley. Dissels launched the menu with 30 or so dishes that rotate on a seasonal basis and over time, has added 30 more that were living in his head.

Most recently, you’ll find Trinidadian channa; coconut-laced sea bass, or Run Down Fish; his grandmother’s Guyanese Cook Up Rice made with slow-cooked Mary’s chicken; brisket and oxtail with yellow split peas, vegetables, sweet chiles and fresh coconut; and a squid ink seafood paella that calls for Fideo pasta, a type of pre-cut vermicelli popular in Venezuela, instead of Bomba rice.

“It’s more absorbent of the flavors and colorates well,” says Dissels, who adds roasted garlic, Cajun spices and Oyo’s own hot sauce to the dish. “It’s umami-packed.”

Dissels says he is most proud of his son and general manager, Samuel, who has grown Oyo’s tropical beverage program to include seasonal caipirinhas and an array of rare, aged Demerara rums. He also credits his staffers, many of whom have been there since they opened.

“It makes me very proud to eavesdrop on their conversations with customers and hear them talk about the culture of our food,” he says.