Jonette Williams grew up in Brooklyn, cooking the South Carolina regional Gullah Geechee cuisine with her mother and grandmother.
With “mommy” and “nana,” Williams spent hours in the kitchen perfecting Gullah Geechee staples such as red rice, slow-cooked spiced legumes, stewed meats, poultry, greens, tomatoes and okra. Her mother’s particular specialty was red rice, she said.
A daughter’s promise
Cooking was so central to the family’s life that when Williams’ mother, Hurtha Robinson, was dying of liver cancer in 2016, Williams made her a promise: One day, she would open a food truck in her mother’s honor.
“She didn’t look at me and say anything else except for ‘When?’ And I told her I didn’t know, but soon,” said Williams, who moved to Columbus in 2001.
“After she passed away, I wanted to honor her.”
Glorious: ‘It was something that she felt about my food’
Williams’ mother even gave her daughter’s food a name: Jonette’s Du Jour Glorieux Cuisine. Glorious, the French word for glorious, stood out.
“It was something that she felt about my food,” she said.
With the name as her foundation, Williams, 41, launched Glorious (pronounced glory-yoo) WaFulz, a gourmet waffle pop-up that has appeared at Antiques on High the last three Saturdays, in addition to Seventh Son Brewing.
She sees the waffle venture as one step closer to the food truck she promised her mother.
“I felt that this way, it would also remind me why I need to be so driven and pursue my dream because it was something that was important to her, that she knew would make me happy.”
Sharing in a mother’s and grandmother’s love of cooking
Williams’ culinary journey started with her mother and grandmother in Brooklyn, and it eventually brought her to Columbus. At 21, Williams moved to Ohio and got her first gig cooking professionally at SC Bar & Kitchen in Reynoldsburg.
“I always had a passion for cooking. It was what would help take me out of any depression or just anything that was going on,” she said. “And it also reminded me of how I was raised. (In Brooklyn) we had fishmongers, we had Jewish delis, so many different, good memories associated around food.”
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It was after working at SC that Williams realized she wanted to open a food truck, and began working at local trucks like Creole 2 Geaux and Links-N-Lemonade for the experience. She’s also worked at former Brewery District restaurant Copious and is currently at Watershed Distillery, which led her to Antiques on High and a conversation that resulted in her serving gourmet waffles for brunch on Saturdays at the brewery.
From pop-ups to dreaming of a food truck
At her pop-ups, she has featured her cinnamon roll waffle, apple pie waffle and fry burger waffle.
Williams hopes the pop-ups and crowdfunding, via the online lending platform Kiva, will help fund the outfitting of her Chevy G30 van into her food truck. She hopes to open the truck this year or by food truck season next spring and summer.
Williams gets her three children involved in the kitchen just as her mother did with her. She jokes that her children’s palettes are pretty basic at the moment, which reminds her of herself as a child.
“I remember how my grandmother and mother used to struggle with getting me to eat certain things,” she said. “And now there’s certain things that I enjoy. I know that she would be so proud.”
tmoorman@dispatch.com
@TaijuanNichole