Thomas Pritchard (July 11, 1883 – July 27, 1964) was an Afro-Caribbean restaurateur and chef who founded the Manila restaurant Tom's Dixie Kitchen in 1916.
Born on the island of Grenada in the British West Indies, Pritchard entered a three-year period of indentured servitude aboard a U.S. merchant ship to gain American citizenship in 1902. It is unclear if he ever received citizenship. In 1906, he joined the U.S. Army Transport Service as a cook for the American sailors supplying American soldiers fighting in the Philippine–American War. He entered the commercial restaurant business in 1911, soon founding Tom's Dixie Kitchen in Plaza Goiti (now Plaza Lascon). Pritchard sometimes falsely presented himself as being an African American Southerner, and the restaurant was partly advertised on that premise.
Tom's Dixie Kitchen initially featured only soul food on its menu, before expanding to also offer a wide variety of food. It also featured jazz music. The restaurant saw great success and it is credited with popularizing Southern fried chicken in the Philippines. It was frequented by many Filipinos and white Americans, and also by the American and Filipino elite. The restaurant became a hotbed of political discourse. In 1927, Pritchard expanded his business with the opening of another restaurant targeted at the elite, Tom's Oriental Grill. Pritchard regularly appeared in African American newspapers, which celebrated his success.
During World War II, the Empire of Japan invaded and occupied the Philippines; Pritchard was one of the few foreigners to avoid prolonged imprisonment and his restaurants were some of the few popular restaurants to remain open, although they were diminished. Various explanations have been put forward for why Pritchard avoided imprisonment. During the war, he smuggled food to foreigners imprisoned at Santo Tomas Internment Camp and also provided food and funds to Filipinos and the guerrilla resistance. His restaurants were destroyed during the Battle of Manila in 1945. Pritchard's wife, Mary, was a Filipino mestiza and they had three children; after the war, Pritchard's family left the Philippines, but he decided to remain. He founded more restaurants after the war, but they saw little success. Pritchard was effectively stateless after the Philippines gained its independence in 1946. The Philippine Supreme Court voted unanimously to grant him citizenship in 1948.
Early life There are no independent accounts or documents of Pritchard's life before he arrived in the Philippines. At various points, Pritchard lied or lied by omission about various aspects of his early life. As a result of his lies and acquaintances making erroneous assumptions, various details about his origin were frequently misreported. The following account of his life before arriving in the Philippines is primarily based on sworn testimony delivered before the Philippine Supreme Court in 1948. The Philippine Supreme Court found no reason to disbelieve the testimony and accepted it as truth. It was also the primary basis of a 2018 account of his life.
Thomas Pritchard was born on July 11, 1883, on the island of Grenada, then part of the British West Indies. His grandparents had probably been enslaved at sugar plantations until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished slavery in most of the British Empire. In his youth, Pritchard likely took part in the exploitation of nutmeg, which had largely supplanted sugar to become Grenada's primary cash crop. Pritchard and his family left Grenada in 1900, moving to Barbados. The Caribbean had recently been destabilized after the United States took Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain in the Spanish–American War. The move to Barbados may have been the result of this destabilization, either because it displaced the family or because they sought greater access to the U.S., which Barbados had closer ties to. In 1902, an American merchant ship came to Bridgetown, Barbados. Pritchard signed a contract of indentured servitude to become a cook onboard it for three years, after which he would gain American citizenship.
The ship came to New York, where Pritchard said he filed paperwork signifying his intention to become an American citizen. He may have spent some time in Virginia. He then briefly came to San Francisco, the largest city on the U.S. Pacific Coast. In 1906, while in San Francisco, he joined the U.S. Army Transport Service as a civilian contractor. According to Pritchard, he left the paperwork proving his American citizenship in San Francisco and it was promptly destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. During the Philippine–American War, many Filipinos starved and many American servicemen, particularly African American servicemen, suffered from malnutrition. Pritchard served as a cook on a Transport Service vessel, feeding the sailors bringing food to the American soldiers suffering from malnutrition. Pritchard later recalled that he was aboard the USAT Sheridan when it ran aground in Hawaii in August 1906. In 1911, Pritchard ended his maritime service and settled in the Philippines. After the United States had established its presence in the Philippines in the Spanish–American War, over 1,000 Black U.S. soldiers stayed on the islands. Arsenio Luz, a Filipino showman and close friend, said he met Pritchard in 1911.
Pritchard came to work at Clarke's Place on Escolta Street, in downtown Manila. Clarke's was a restaurant and ice cream parlor run by the American businessman Metcalfe A. Clarke and it was popular with Americans. The restaurant was home to a large oval table where many of Manila's leading businessmen met daily for coffee and lunch, discussing and debating politics. Pritchard was head chef at the restaurant. Pritchard proposed a "daily 'home-cooked' luncheon course", which gained him a loyal following. Clarke had provided the capital to found the Benguet Consolidated Mining Company, which included mortgaging his assets, including the restaurant. Clarke lost his investment and the restaurant was liquidated by the Bank of the Philippine Islands. The businessmen purchased the oval table they sat around at the liquidation sale.
Tom's Dixie Kitchen In 1916, Pritchard founded the restaurant Tom's Dixie Kitchen. It was located in Plaza Goiti (now Plaza Lascon), which was at the center of the city's business district and nightlife. It began as a small lunch counter. Pritchard may have gotten the funds to open it from the savings he had accumulated at sea or with the sponsorship of the businessman who frequented Clarke's. The restaurant was open 24 hours a day every day. Pritchard later recalled that for the first two years of operation he only had two assistants and did all the cooking himself. The business eventually became successful. Pritchard used a rigid accounting method to prevent workers from defrauding him. As indicated by the restaurant's name, Pritchard sometimes falsely presented himself as being African American. Some people were aware of his true origins in the Caribbean, probably because of his accent, but they came to the mistaken conclusion that he was Jamaican.
The round table that existed at Clarke's moved into Tom's Dixie Kitchen, for a time. Tom's Dixie Kitchen became known for its own round table. One humorous essay in Philippine Magazine noted two "world centers of learning and culture" in Manila: the University of the Philippines's library and the round table at Tom's Dixie Kitchen. A. V. H. Hartendorp, a Thomasite and newspaper owner, recalled that there were various round tables reserved for various groups, such as bureaucrats, legislators, businessmen, actors, and one for sportswriters and sports-fans. At the round tables, a diverse spectrum of people at every hour of the day debated and discussed a wide variety of petty and significant issues.
Pritchard incorporated his business as Tom's Dixie Kitchen, Inc for . He was its principal stockholder and president of the company's board. Jesus Barrera, later an associate justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, was also a stockholder and served on the board. Pritchard also employed two African American assistants , Chester Canders and Philip McCullough, both veterans of World War I.
In 1921, boxing manager Frank A. Churchill was sitting at a round table and predicted that a Filipino would one day become boxing world champion. The sportswriters, sports fans, and businessmen present laughed and ridiculed the idea. Reportedly desiring the respect of the influential diners, Churchill soon helped the Filipino boxer Pancho Villa travel to the United States, where he would become the world flyweight champion. It has been suggested that, if Churchill had not sat at the round table in Pritchard's restaurant, Pancho Villa would not have become world champion and boxing in the Philippines would not have become popular. Pritchard would later promote boxing at his restaurant, selling tickets to bouts, and he probably helped facilitate a visit to the Philippines by Joe Louis.
The restaurant expanded to take over nearly the whole block it was on, which Pritchard said occurred in 1926. In 1928, Pritchard said he had 12 cooks, 40 waiters, and 1,200 average daily customers. The restaurant was at the height of its popularity during the pre-war Philippine Commonwealth, during which there was a gold boom. On May 10, 1941, for the first moment in its 25 years of operation 24 hours a day every day, Tom's Dixie Kitchen shut down. Earlier in the day, 50 waiters at the restaurant started a sitdown strike. Pritchard shut down the restaurant, which the strikers characterized as a lockout and sought an order to reopen the restaurant; Pritchard said that he shut it down because business was poor. The waiters said the strike was in protest to what they saw as abuses by C. Hendricks, the manager. Pritchard said it was because he had fired two waiters and that it was instigated by an ex-employee he had fired years prior.
Menu and atmosphere Tom's Dixie Kitchen initially offered soul food, the ethnic cuisine of African Americans. Pritchard was probably able to make passable soul food from experience gained from cooking at sea or from visiting American ports. Hartendorp attributed the restaurant's popularity to the soul food it served. The restaurant popularized Southern fried chicken in the Philippines. The restaurant's menu diversified from the soul food that was originally its exclusive purview. It expanded to serve food from a wide variety of places, such as Wales, Mexico, France, the Philippines, the Caribbean, and China. It also served processed food originating from the United States, such as Grape-Nuts, shredded wheat, and corn flakes. The restaurant offered sugary desserts, such as pumpkin pie, chocolate éclairs, ice cream, and milk shakes. Despite being a colony of the United States, the Philippines was not under prohibition and Tom's Dixie Kitchen sold alcohol. It offered a wide variety of alcohol, such as Holland gin fizz, French rum, German goldwasser, Japanese beer, Italian wines, Australian wines, Canadian whisky, and Irish scotch.
Tom's Dixie Kitchen featured jazz music. At his dance floor, African-American dance was frequently performed to jazz. The restaurant had an orchestra. It probably contained multiple African American musicians, with some probably being trained by Pritchard's friend Walter Loving. The orchestra was also broadcast on the radio.
Clientele