HOW THE SON OF THE KING OF SOUL FOOD FORGED A NEW PATH

GREG DULAN’S FIGHT TO SAVE BLACK FOOD CULTURE IN L.A.

- BY LAURIE OCHOA

T’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE for Greg Dulan, owner of the longtime soul food gathering spot Dulan’s on Crenshaw, to walk outside his restaurant without a passerby shouting out a greeting or sharing a reminiscence.

“You know who you look like?” asked one woman who approached him on the sidewalk along L.A.’s Destination Crenshaw corridor recently. “Adolf. Adolf Dulan. I remember when he first came into business. He had a catering truck. It was right there on Rodeo. That was more than 50 years ago.” “Oh, boy,” said the restaurateur, who is this year’s winner of the Los Angeles Times’ Gold Award. “That was my dad. I'm Greg Dulan. Thank you for the memory.”

Dulan’s roots in the neighborhood are deep. When you walk into his restaurant, which reopened last year after two years of construction to expand and modernize the space, the walls are covered with reminders of his history.

“We tell the story of one African American family,” Dulan said, “from the end of slavery to today.”

His great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Dulan, seen in one of the restaurant’s many black-and-white photos with wife, Annie Dulan, and seven of 14 children, was born in 1865 and traveled from Missouri to Oklahoma, “where he signed up to participate in the Oklahoma land run in 1889,” said Dulan. “He was able to secure an 80-acre farm where our family comes from.”

Another picture shows his grandmother surrounded by chickens on that family farm near Luther, Okla. “I don’t know if it’s true,” Dulan noted, “but they said she was getting ready to make fried chicken.”

Amid the trove of memorabilia — including photos of the many dignitaries, celebrities and politicians on the campaign trail who have come through the restaurant since its 1992 opening — there is one artifact that Dulan calls “my most prized possession.”