Chicago’s South Side is brimming with inimitable African-American culture and history, and pastry chef Maya-Camille Broussard brings her sweet flavor to where she was born and raised. In June, Ms. Broussard opened the first physical store of her longtime pie delivery and wholesaler, Justice of the Pies.
The shop, in a former dental office in Avalon Park, one of the South Side’s many historic, predominantly African-American neighborhoods, serves Ms. Broussard’s inventive cakes and pastries, such as her calling cards — a blue cheese praline pie and a strawberry basil Key lime pie — along with unorthodox items like her peach pie with salted caramel and a deep-dish chilaquiles quiche.
Ms. Broussard, who lost 75 percent of her hearing in a childhood accident, is arguably the industry’s most prominent hard-of-hearing black pastry chef. She has gained followers for her pies through social media, pop-ups and appearances on the Netflix competition show ‘Bake Squad’. “I realized that being a member of the deaf and hard of hearing community actually gave me a superpower,” she said, “and that superpower includes a heightened sense of smell and taste.”
Ms. Broussard chose the location of her bakery in hopes of encouraging other chefs and entrepreneurs to join her. “I want to force people who don’t look like me to come to the South Side if they want my pies,” she said. “I want to force people to come to a neighborhood that deserves private investment, a neighborhood with a destroyed hallway, a neighborhood with empty storefronts.”
Zella Palmer, an author and professor at Dillard University in New Orleans who grew up on Chicago’s south side, said neighborhoods like Avalon Park deserve more inventive black businesses. “There’s tremendous pride in the community to see this shiny pie shop,” she said. “This is a pie shop that looks like it could be in Brooklyn, or Magazine Street in New Orleans, but it’s here.”
Several of the store’s counters are 32 inches high, meet American Disabilities Act height standards, and are wheelchair accessible. Each area of the store has a different floor tile texture, helping customers with limited vision who use a cane navigate the store.
“How can I be an ambassador for people with disabilities and have a space that is not accessible?” she said. Signs in the shop bear Braille inscriptions and the language is also designed to be inclusive. (In the bathroom, there are “personal hygiene products” instead of “feminine hygiene products.”) A service door with a bell and flashlight allows Mrs. Broussard to keep track of important deliveries.
Ms. Broussard started Justice of the Pies in 2014 and named it after her father, Stephen Broussard, a criminal defense attorney and former activist. She had a complicated relationship with him and has sought healing through the bakery. Mr. Broussard showed a fondness for cakes and convinced a young Mrs. Broussard – an initial skeptic – to give them a try.
Over several years, she worked in a variety of companies and spaces while also creating programs to address food insecurity, including teaching young people on the South Side what she describes as “self-reliance” skills, such as budgeting, making a grocery list, and follow a prescription.
Mrs. Broussard communicates through lip-reading, which requires an effort that can slow down her cake-making process. To keep up with demand, the pastry chef keeps her head down while working and hears ambient noise instead of what someone is saying to her, leading some customers to believe she is ignoring them. (One even stormed out and cursed at her before leaving.)
She is eager to push the boundaries with her new menu, which will debut in full in September. She talks about including items outside of her cakes to round it out — like the lunchroom cookie, her play on a buttery sugar cookie once served in the city’s public schools. She tinkers with a tuna melt with sun-dried tomatoes, fig jam, olives and Manchego.
“When people are willing to play with me and engage with what I’m creating, it feels good because it’s like ‘OK, I’m doing something crazy, but it works.'”
8655 South Blackstone Ave, Chicago, justiceofthepies.com.
