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Doretha Bacon, co-creator of Doe-Al restaurants, brought Southern cooking to all

 
Doretha Bacon, co-founder of Doe-Al’s restaurants, died Oct. 10 of a respiratory illness. She was 89.
Doretha Bacon, co-founder of Doe-Al’s restaurants, died Oct. 10 of a respiratory illness. She was 89.
Published Oct. 23, 2014

ST. PETERSBURG — Without an inner certainty she seemed born with, Doretha Bacon likely would not have created a string of successful barbecue and Southern restaurants around St. Petersburg, more than half of them in predominantly white areas.

A wide swath of customers was the better for it.

For 14 years, including all of the 1980s, Canadian tourists and boaters from a nearby marina trekked to Doe-Al Country Cookin' on Pasadena Avenue for fried chicken and Texas-style barbecue ribs, collard greens with chunks of corn bread, and just enough bacon and ham to season them.

For several of those years, Mrs. Bacon also ran a Doe-Al restaurant on 62nd Avenue N; a Doe-Al's Southern Kitchen and a catering business on 16th Street S; a Chef's Fried Chicken downtown; and a kiosk at Tyrone Square Mall from which she sold chocolate chip cookies.

Her fried chicken was well worth the wait, former Times food critic Chris Sherman once told readers: "The thick dark crunch of the cornmeal will make you glad this bird isn't skinless; every twist and flap of skin is crackling good, inside the flesh is lush, hot and full flavored."

All of that came before her biggest success, a pie-making business that swept into grocery stores from here to the Carolinas.

Mrs. Bacon, an entrepreneur who prospered by expanding traditional boundaries, died Oct. 10 of a respiratory illness. She was 89.

"She always had that confidence," said world-famous trombonist Buster Cooper, Mrs. Bacon's brother. "There was not a doubt bone in her body."

The first Doe-Al restaurant opened in 1969 in the now-defunct Times Square Shopping Center at 22nd Avenue S and 31st Street. The name is a contraction of her first name and that of Alice Bradley, her sister and business partner for the initial decade.

She opened more soul food restaurants in other parts of town for the same reasons that might have scared others away: Such places didn't exist in those areas.

"I feel there's a real need in this area for Southern cooking — the barbecue and the vegetables," Mrs. Bacon said more than 30 years ago, as she was about to open a restaurant at 205 First St. N. "There are lots of Southerners here, plus the Northerners like to eat something different when vacationing or moving here."

Doretha Cooper was born and grew up in St. Petersburg. At 18, the Gibbs High School graduate set up a beauty shop on the back porch of her family home. For the first and final time, a business she started failed to make ends meet.

She then moved to New York City, where she waited tables. She got a job as a live-in babysitter while attending the New York Institute of Dietetics. For the following 11 years, Mrs. Bacon worked as a dietitian for the Kingsbridge Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews.

Her 1961 marriage to Army Master Sgt. Eddie Bacon took her to the Pacific Northwest. She worked as a hospital dietitian in Corvallis, Ore., and set up a food stand at a bowling alley in tiny Prineville, Ore., where she and her husband were the only black faces within miles.

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Eddie Bacon's retirement after 27 years prompted a move back to St. Petersburg. At her several restaurants, Mrs. Bacon was known for employing young people who had been in trouble or adults coming out of jail.

"I was really moved by the fact that she gave people a second chance when she realized a person might have been on work release and knew it would be difficult for them to find employment," said Lareé Davis, a relative who works at the Pinellas County Job Corps Center.

By the mid 1990s, Mrs. Bacon had closed all of her restaurants to mass produce her enviable sweet potato and pecan pies. Working out of a frozen-food storage warehouse, she and her staff produced about 400 Mrs. B's Original Recipe Southern Heritage pies a week. The pies made their way onto shelves in all Publix stores, as well as many Winn-Dixie, Kash N' Karry and Food Lion stores.

In 2005, locals who had missed her home cooking got a reprieve. After a decade without restaurants, a Doe-Al's Bar-B-Que opened at 5215 34th St. S. While it lasted, the restaurant was yet another fulfillment of a dream.

"One of my deepest feelings," Mrs. Bacon once told the Times, "is to be in a position to have an idea and to be able to express it with my work. Nobody stops you but yourself."

Contact Andrew Meacham at ameacham@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2248. Follow @torch437.