A Recipe of Fate: Miss Johnnie Mae’s
What is the difference between coincidence and fate? Just ask Otis Battles Jr. at Miss Johnnie Mae’s Kitchen. His beloved installation at Stock + Grain is the product of his fateful journey to honor his grandmother and find his true passion. So thanks to Miss Johnnie Mae, High Pointers can share in the family’s love for innovative soul food with a cajun twist.
Otis, originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, came to High Point through his family’s relocation. His restaurant namesake, grandma Miss Johnnie Mae, was married and relocated to High Point. So, when Otis’s family was ready to move, they had the Triad in mind.
Otis found himself back up north where he spent 20 years attending flights with Delta Airlines while living in Philadelphia. In 2020, the pandemic brought him a change of scenery. Delta offered early retirement, which Otis gladly took. While he loved his time up in the air, he knew he was ready for something new. The first part of that change was heading down the east coast back to High Point, NC. After a little soul searching, he decided to pursue cooking soul food.While he may have daydreamed about lounging on the beach, his untapped potential was always just around the corner.
Otis asked himself, “What is it that I really have a passion to do?”
Sometimes, the answer is right in front of you, and Otis realized his grandma, Miss Johnnie Mae herself gave him that answer long ago.
Otis says, “This past Mother’s Day marked eight years since my grandmother passed. She left me her recipes when she did. I had no clue what I was going to do with that. She left my sister a car. She left me her recipe book. I was a little upset at first because I couldn’t understand. Why would Granny do that?”
He thought about his own place in the kitchen. At this point, he had only really cooked for himself and close friends, but never for crowds of people. But friends started encouraging him to do more with his talent. How can a passion for food turn into a career? Here’s how: fate.
Otis says, “I was going through my phone deleting old pictures and duplicates, and I found a picture of me and my grandmother. It was the last picture that we took–probably six months before she passed. We were at my parents' house and I was sitting on the steps on the front porch, and she was sitting in the rocking chair behind me, shelling peas. She was telling me then, don't be comfortable at the airline. These were her exact words: ‘You're serving first class, but you're getting ready to fly first class’. It was her way of telling me that I could do so much more, and to not be stuck where I was. At that point I was 19 years into my airline career and I figured I was going to do it for at least 10 more years.”
But instead of flying for another decade or so, he found his way home to High Point, and into a kitchen where he could share his grandmother’s legacy.
Otis says, “I called my mom and said maybe I should do a food truck. I went and bought a book called Food Trucks for Dummies, and went on a cruise for five days. I was married to that book for those five days. I went over it, over it, over it, over it.”
At the end of his cruise, he was ready to order himself a brand spanking new food truck and start prepping his menu–chock full of his grandma’s recipes. One thing about Otis is he’s going to go the extra mile. Alongside his new truck, he knew his grand opening had to reflect his dedication to making his work really shine. When he set his launch date, he also sent invitations to friends in the music industry that could help him go all out.
In the midst of pandemic isolation and lack of community, Otis held an outdoor event where people could keep their distance while reconnecting with the folks they hadn’t been able to see in so long. So on one hand Otis was rekindling a community that needed to be uplifted in trying times, and on the other hand?
“Bam! I hit them with the food. The cajun fried salmon. Nobody in High Point had ever had that before. And that’s how I knew it had become a passion because people were going from ‘this is good’ to ‘this is great. When are you going to be open again?’ I’m chasing that high of new people asking when they can have my food again. It really has become my life,” Otis says.
Otis took his truck on the road, riding up and down the east coast from Boston to Miami with all the stops between. He was a hit at festivals, concerts, gatherings, Bar Mitzvahs–you name it, he cooked for it.
After two and a half years on the road, Miss Johnnie Mae’s was ready to find a stable location, and luckily, they found a home base in Stock + Grain!
“The first three weeks that we were open here at Stock + Grain, I had dreams all night, every night, about fried chicken,” Otis says.“ I had to take a deep breath and remember that the people love what I’m doing and to enjoy the process. But that fed my passion. The dreams started coming in and I was excited to get here in the morning.”
And his loyal clientele who followed his food truck are now adding High Point as a stop on their journeys to make sure they pay a visit to Miss Johnnie Mae’s. It’s not unusual to see folks like a couple from New York, who stopped to thank Otis for the amazing food. When they traveled to the Triad for a conference in Greenville, they remembered the name of his food truck from when they first tried his food hundreds of miles away, and just had to have it again. But now with a storefront in Stock+Grain, a totally new clientele has met Miss Johnnie Mae’s.
Alongside his “everyday menu” of fried chicken wings, baked turkey wings, jerk chicken, rasta pasta, and sweet potato cornbread, he has seafood Fridays and Saturdays with fried shrimp and lobster tails, and cajun fried salmon. Then on Sundays, they amp the menu up with oxtail dinners, smothered pork chops, barbecue ribs, mango barbecue chicken, potato salad and yams.
If you think the food sounds amazing, the process behind it sounds just as good.
“It’s to honor my grandmother,” Otis says, “So there were things I kept the same, and other things that I took to a different level because I wanted to stand out. Anybody can make collard greens, so we make smoked turkey collard greens.”
While his direct inspiration is his grandmother, he takes note of the generational differences in cuisine and adds “a little flair” to his food for the younger generation that craves something unique. His balance between legacy and innovation is apparent. In his family run business, all of his cousins, nieces, and nephews make Miss Johnnie Mae’s special through their own unique relationships to the namesake of the kitchen. But Otis’s mother has an intricate role in what he does.
Otis’s mother serves to keep his aspirations grounded. While innovation is an essential element of his cooking, staying true to his roots is just as important, and that person that keeps him grounded is his mom. Otis says, “Mom would always say, Granny did it like this and, and Granny is what made it so special. That's what works, and that's what people love.”
When Otis reflects on his journey to Miss Johnnie Mae’s Kitchen, and ponders the road ahead, he’s taken back to that fateful photograph of his grandmother and him sitting on the porch together.
“I think she was passing the baton at that time. I often wonder what she would say, and I hope that she's pleased,” Otis says. Great food and deep familial love is a recipe for success, and Miss Johnnie Mae’s Kitchen is proof enough of that.
"I had to take a deep breath and remember that the people love what I’m doing and to enjoy the process. That fed my passion."
Otis Battles Jr., owner of Miss Johnnie Mae's
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