Black-owned restaurants cooking up specialties ahead of Baltimore AFRAM Festival

BALTIMORE -- The road to AFRAM has begun! 

WJZ is proud to be the media sponsor of one of the largest African American festivals on the East Coast. 

To get people excited for the festival, AFRAM is highlighting Black-owned restaurants from June 12-18.  

More than 150,000 people follow Simone Phillips' Baltimore food blog, @charmcitytable on Instagram. This year, she's encouraging people to try new things and to support Black-owned restaurants for 2023 AFRAM Restaurant Week.

"We are celebrating Baltimore's black food scene," said Phillips.

Phillips helped curate a list of Black-owned eats and treats for this year's AFRAM restaurant week. 

Restaurant week is the week leading up to the AFRAM festival on the weekend of Juneteenth at Druid Hill Park.

"We have a select group of black-owned restaurants that have specials. We encourage everybody to go out and try the specials to really get excited for AFRAM," Phillips said.

One of her 'sweeter' selections is Tia's Italian Ice in Hampden, where you can try Tia's special –eight different flavors including a Juneteenth flavor– for restaurant week.

"It's just so flavorful and so delicious without being too syrupy and sticky," said Phillips.

Phillips' list includes 24 Black-owned restaurants throughout the city, each of them offering an AFRAM-themed dish.

"Across the street, we have jerk taco, and they are doing an oxtail mac and cheese which sounds really good. And then hot dog central, and they're doing a jerk dog," said Phillips.

"Within the black food scene, you have black American soul food, desserts, Caribbean, African – and they're all listed on that AFRAM restaurant week menu," said Phillips. "It's really about uplifting the Baltimore food scene and all the good stuff it has to offer."

You can find the full list of participating restaurants here: