Martha Lou’s Kitchen, the Morrison Drive soul food restaurant that drew diners from across the country, has closed after 37 years, The Post and Courier reported Wednesday.
The restaurant closed Sept. 1 following the sale of the pink building that housed it, according to the newspaper, which credited WCBD with first reporting the closing. Owner Martha Lou Gadsden, 90, had rented the space for decades. Her granddaughter, Melanie Alston, said the building, previously owned by Craig Bennett, is slated for demolition.
“It’s her retirement age,” Alston said. “But she is going to miss doing business.”
Business barely dropped off after the coronavirus pandemic began, Alston said. She credited the restaurant’s popularity and takeout favorites such as turkey wings, lima beans, baked chicken and collard greens.
“We did well during the pandemic,” she said.
Martha Lou’s will keep offering catering, and the family is discussing whether to reopen in another location, according to The Post and Courier.
“If we’re going to have something else independently, we’re going to revisit that in six months to a year,” said Alston, who ran Martha Lou’s Kitchen #2 in North Charleston for two years.
Gadsden started as a waitress at the Ladson House Restaurant on President Street in the late 1960s, once her nine children were old enough to look after themselves, she told a Southern Foodways Alliance oral historian in 2016. She opened her own restaurant in 1983 in a converted service station, selling hot dogs and soda pop, then switched to home cooking such as smothered pork chops and okra soup, the newspaper reported.
Chefs Sean Brock, Andrew Zimmern and Sara Moulton helped bring the restaurant international attention. A 2011 New York Times column by then-critic Sam Sifton concluded, “In the cosmology of Southern cooking, Martha Lou’s is no dwarf planet. It is close to the sun itself.” Bon Appetit and Southern Living followed with their own praise, the newspaper reported.
By 2016, the flow of tourists was strong enough that Gadsden raised her prices, charging $14 for a meat-and-three plate that had cost $8.50, according to The Post and Courier.
