Annie Wright, Southern cook and restaurateur, dies at 100
By CRAIG BASSE
Published November 8, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG - A gifted Southern cook, Annie Wright fed thousands of hungry diners in her day.
For decades, with her husband, Wilbur, she served up soul food like collards, black-eyed peas and fried chicken from two Midtown restaurants.
Along with customers who worked as maids, janitors, nannies and porters, she drew celebrities such as James Brown, Ray Charles and Little Richard. They strolled to her restaurant from the Manhattan Casino next door for a quick bite before their performances.
"Sit yourself down, baby," she'd say. "How about some beef stew?"
Mrs. Wright died Friday (Nov. 3, 2006) under the care of the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast. She was 100.
In the 1940s, she and her husband opened the Squeeze-In, a hole-in-the-wall cafe. In 1952, they established the Harlem Restaurant on 22nd Street S.
Mrs. Wright gave jobs to neighborhood youngsters, teaching them the proper way to prepare old-style country meals. Years later, people still talked about her biscuits.
"I remember her getting up every morning around 4, getting dressed and going down to open the restaurant," a son, Tyrone, said Tuesday. "The restaurant closed at 9, and she got home at 11."
Mrs. Wright and her husband did all the cooking. She operated the restaurant alone during the summers for many years while her husband worked in Cape May, N.J., restaurants.
As a kid of 12, Tyrone Wright toiled weekends at the restaurant. His mother offered to teach him to cook, he said, but he never took her up on it.
"She was a great cook," he said. "That's what she was known for."
The Wrights sold out in the 1960s to the Atwater family, but she remained for several years as a cook. The Atwaters closed the Harlem on 22nd Street S and in 1977 opened the Atwater Cafeteria on 22nd Avenue S.
Born in 1906 in Augusta, Ga., the former Annie Nero learned country cooking from a grandmother. She came here at 19.
Her husband died in 1995. Survivors include two sons, Willie, of Riviera Beach, and Tyrone, of St. Petersburg; a sister, Hattie Ballard, of Miami; several nieces and nephews; 14 grandchildren; and 17 great-grandchildren.
Friends may call from 3 to 8 p.m. Friday at McRae Funeral Home, 1940 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. S. A family wake service will be from 7 to 8 p.m.
A funeral service will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Bethel Community Baptist Church, 2901 54th Ave. S, with burial at Royal Palm Cemetery South.