SPENCER — The dining room at Fleming Street Bakery and Southern Cuisine was packed on Thursday as guests clamored into the Spencer establishment for a soulful Juneteenth meal.

Owner and head chef Quinta Ellis said that celebrating Juneteenth was always a fixture on their calendar. The holiday, now federally recognized, observes a watershed moment in American history, when the last enslaved people learned of their emancipation from bondage in 1865, following the conclusion of the Civil War.

“For the Black community, it’s always a time to get together,” Ellis said. “And, you know, it’s a community gathering and a family gathering in the neighborhood, so there’s always food involved, and it’s a moment to just celebrate freedom.”

Ellis’s culinary offerings on Thursday were an authentic nod to Black culture from before and after emancipation. The menu featured fried chicken and flounder, pigs feet, potato wedges, green beans, mac n’ cheese, cabbage, cream corn, okra, dinner rolls and hush puppies. A strawberry shortcake was served for dessert.

“I just wanted to do things which when you think about the Black community, things that are just really important, as far as the cuisine of this community,” Ellis said. “I wanted to do some type of pork, specifically, either chitlins or pig feet. Those are things that when you look at the history, the culinary history of Africans that were enslaved, those types of foods are the things that they had because they were what was left over.”

Ellis mentioned that it was common for enslaved people to wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. Knowing that they would need food meant getting out in front of food preparation and cooking pigs feet is a long process.

“Four to five hours for it to cook and to get tender and falling off the bone,” Ellis said. “One of the things that I really wanted to do is, I’m still learning kind of those, I don’t say, long lost, but kind of those older types of food that, like my grandmother and great aunts liked to cook…

Ellis explained that due to her family and community’s oral traditions, no amount of self-help videos would help get to the finish line.

“Foods in our community, there is no recipe, and so it’s just kind of that oral history of passing those recipes down,” she said. “I spent plenty of time on YouTube and tried to figure out how to do it, but it wasn’t good.”

So, Ellis said she called in the professional.

“I actually had my great aunt come in and she cooked the pig feet,” Ellis said. “For me, that was super special.”

The name Fleming Street pays homage to Ellis’s grandmother’s Woodleaf legacy, so having her grandmother’s younger sister in house for the holiday food prep meant a lot to her.

“It was an honor to have her here, because, you know, she’s my elder, and she still has that touch,” Ellis said.

As Ellis bore witness, she saw the food’s transformation from an undesirable body part to a delicacy.

“It’s cooked in vinegar so you have that taste in there,” she said. “It helps with just breaking down that pork and that acidic flavor is great when you cook it with pork, so you’re getting all of those flavors in. A lot of people like to eat it with hot sauce as well.”

Other items, like the strawberry shortcake, possessed an inherent symbolism.

“Red is one of the colors that represents Juneteenth,” Ellis said. “So red not only represents the blood that was shed during slavery and everything in this country in that fight towards freedom but also the resilience and joy. Red is this duality of blood, but also joyfulness.”

It helps that strawberries are in season and as Ellis described on Thursday, “amazing right now.”

Ellis is a former educator, having taught history for various school systems for 15 years.

“We were never in school during Juneteenth, but it was always a part of my lesson plans,” Ellis said. “I was a history and social science teacher, so somehow, some way, you have to talk about the history of this country. And a part of that is, why is this even a holiday? Why is there even a community that celebrates this day? The other side is, why is the larger community not celebrating it?”

Ellis hoped that her dinner on Thursday could be as informative as it was filling.

“There’s so many different communities that are struggling whether it’s for physical freedom, mental freedom, financial freedom,” she said. “Unfortunately, people look at it as like, this is the Black people’s day. But it’s not right. This is part of American history, and you cannot have Juneteenth without what happened in America. And so there’s no day to celebrate if there wasn’t bondage of a whole group of people.”

While she acknowledged that she is happy the United States officially recognizes Juneteenth now, she said that she and her family never shied away from it in the past.

“For the Black community, my community, it’s super important to honor Juneteenth, to honor the struggle, to honor the resilience of this community and how we come together,” Ellis said.

Fleming Street Bakery is located at 400A S. Salisbury Ave., Spencer. It is open Thursday through Sunday. Learn more by visiting, https://www.flemingstreetnc.com/.