Our Story...

With the Spring 2009 opening of Eatonville, Andy Shallal’s Zora Neale Hurston-inspired restaurant is strategically placed to mend a decade-old literary rift between author and her contemporary, Langston Hughes, whom Shallal’s Busboys and Poets is named in honor of. The two Harlem Renaissance writers collaborated on a comedic play, Mule Bone, but the friendship turned sour when they fought over copyright privileges. Since the restaurants are directly across the street from each other, Shallal sees it as a chance to reunite the two writers!

Eatonville is named for Hurston’s Florida hometown and the country’s first, post-Civil War, African American incorporated town and the focal point in her most famous work, Their Eyes Were Watching God.