For Simone Faure, the events of June 19, 1865 — the day that the last enslaved African Americans in the U.S. learned of their freedom — are interesting enough on their own.
But the following days, she said, fascinate her.
”What must that have been like,” she said, “to wake up on June 20 knowing that you were free, you were your own person? Or June 21, when people set out to go and look for family members?”
Faure carries that feeling to her work. The pastry designer and co-owner of the James Beard-nominated La Pâtisserie Chouquette in St. Louis began a tradition of observing Juneteenth with a special menu in 2018. This year, the menu is influenced by the stories of the cuisine that newly emancipated Black Americans took with them as they left plantations to pursue new opportunities.
“I don't think it's enough in 2025 to simply make good food; you can get good food in a lot of places,” Faure said. “I think people are truly hungry now to know not just the ingredients that they're putting in their bodies, [but] who's making it, and where did this come from?”
One item returning to Chouquette’s Juneteenth menu this year — sweet potato pone — is chock-full of personal stories. Faure grew up eating the dish in Louisiana.
“I talked to people who live here who are from New Orleans, and they were not eating sweet potato pone growing up,” Faure said. “So I called my mother, and I was like, ‘What's up with this?' And she goes, “Oh, yeah, girl, no … my grandmother, she's the one who taught me how to make that.’”
That response only left Faure with more questions. Where did her grandmother learn to make sweet potato pone?
Ultimately, the answer came through some sleuthing with a stranger who’d found Faure through a DNA testing service. That stranger from Guyana ended up being Faure’s cousin. Their common relatives, a pair of siblings who had come out of West Africa, had been separated, one ending up in Barbados and the other in North or South Carolina. Faure and her newly discovered cousin bonded over having similar, but different, family recipes for pone.
“A light bulb went off in my head because I had seen my family through the lens of Louisiana, Mississippi and Africa, not the Carolinas,” Faure said. “My grandmother’s and my great-grandmother's family … were from the Gullah [Geechee] community, where they would have learned this pone recipe and been able to bring it with them to Mississippi and Louisiana — and preserve it through us.”
“[My cousin] was still making her version with cassava and coconut. Our connection was through these recipes,” Faure said.
Pre-orders for this year’s La Pâtisserie Chouquette Juneteenth menu are now over, though menu items will be available Saturday on a first-come, first-served basis. That includes Carolina gold rice pudding with cane syrup, crawfish pies and a watermelon salad with feta, olives, red onion and a balsamic glaze, among other items. Stories behind the dishes can be found on the bakery’s Instagram page.
"My hope — my wish — is to tell stories of the food and the people who made them, and have the menu evolve,” Faure said.
Related event:
What: La Pâtisserie Chouquette’s Juneteenth event
Where: 1626 Tower Grove Ave., St. Louis, MO 63110
When: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 21
To learn about other items on this year’s Juneteenth menu at La Pâtisserie Chouquette, and why Faure’s approach to Juneteenth is grounded in storytelling, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. The production intern is Darrious Varner. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
