Helen Holmes of Ms. Girlee's Kitchen holds up the restaurant's signature chicken sandwich. (Photo by Jay Paul)
It took Helen Holmes 600 days to reopen Ms. Girlee’s Kitchen in Fulton Hill once she secured a building at 4809 Parker St. She knows because she’s been counting.
“I struggled so hard,” says the 52-year-old chef-owner, revealing that since debuting the eatery named after her late grandmother in early March, it feels like a tremendous burden has been lifted from her shoulders.
“I went through a deep, deep depression and felt like I was never going to open,” she continues. The Charles City native, who suffers from lupus and anxiety, says she began to see a therapist over the past couple of years. “I didn’t want to fail; it’s my grandmother’s name that I’m representing.”
This isn’t the first time the mother of three has operated a restaurant to honor her grandmother, but it is the first time she’s done so on her own. In 2012, Holmes' younger brother, chef Frank Crump, approached her about launching a catering business they would call GFC Catering, named after their grandmother, Girlee Francis Crump. Holmes took the leap of faith with her sibling, and the decision changed her life forever.
“Everything he said would come to pass, [did],” she says of her brother. “When we first started, he used to say, ‘We’ll be so busy, you’re going to have to quit your job.’ … And we were so, so busy. He used to say, ‘By the end of the year, we’re going to find a building to do the catering.' ”
After two months, GFC Catering was booming, and Holmes quit her job at a pediatrics office. Three months following, the duo secured a brick-and-mortar space at 112 N. Fifth St., where they operated the restaurant Ms. Girlee’s Kitchen for four years until the building was sold.
Crump saw the sale as an opportunity to pursue his own endeavors, and Holmes, a chance to branch out on her own and continue to keep her family’s traditions alive through food. Holmes began searching for another restaurant space when a familiar building popped up. Raising her family in Fulton, Holmes and her children would order from Sing Hing Chinese restaurant every Friday night — it felt serendipitous that the space was for lease.
She acted fast: “All I had on my mind was that I couldn’t lose business, and that it was the space for me.”
But when she received the keys to her solo venture, her heart sank. The building had been vacant for years and would require thousands of dollars in renovations. Neither financially nor mentally prepared, Holmes did what she does best, cook.
“That’s when I started doing fish fries,” she says of the once-a-week events that began in July 2018. “I did a fish fry every week in 100-degree weather.”
Obtaining vendor permits and renting fryers, she prepared the food at a friend’s restaurant on the South Side, set up tents outside her forthcoming restaurant and remained focused.
“I was adamant about opening the business without debt. I wanted to earn all the money myself to do all the renovations, and I did — I earned $75,000 doing fish fries,” she says. Holmes also offered catering services and hosted pop-up brunches at 63Thirty5 Restaurant in South Side during that time.
The Fulton Hill fish fries quickly transitioned into community gatherings, lines wrapping around the building, customers traveling from Maryland and North Carolina seeking out Holmes' plump, no-filler crab cakes, a spin on the mackerel and salmon cakes her grandmother once made.
“We couldn’t afford crab meat [back then], Grandma couldn’t afford it, so that same recipe I took from mackerel cakes and salmon cakes,” Holmes says.
Although the delayed opening was not ideal, what began as a way to raise funds allowed Ms. Girlee’s to reestablish itself as a neighborhood name before the soul food restaurant opened its doors.
“The community is very supportive,” Holmes says. "I have people who don’t have a lot of money but come in for just a drink. I have one lady who is caring for her father and comes in three times a week to buy dinner.”
For the past four years, Holmes has also worked with Community 50/50, a nonprofit focused on youth mentoring and community outreach, providing food that is then distributed to local families.
“It doesn’t matter if I serve one person or 100 people, I feel like that’s something I have to do,” she says.
Now, in addition to giving back, Holmes is serving comfort staples five days a week at Ms. Girlee’s — “Mama’s Meatloaf” smothered in gravy, bologna burgers, The Chimbo steak and cheese sandwich, baked chicken, seafood boils, collards, cornbread, and mac and cheese. She offers daily specials such as the wildly popular deep-fried snow crab clusters, the seafood and chicken Gov’ment Road combo, tacos on Tuesdays, and pasta dishes such as lasagna and chicken Alfredo.
Her favorite? “The fried chicken. I could it eat it three times a day.” Asked if she has a secret ingredient or just the magic touch, Holmes laughs and replies, “The key to fried chicken is to make sure it’s seasoned inside and out, and the key is brining it.”
While the pandemic has shuttered her 40-seat dining room for the time being and limited the restaurant to takeout service, Holmes says, “At least I’m open. If I can go through 600 days of trying to open … I can get through anything."
Ms. Girlee’s Kitchen is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
