OUR STORY, as told by the Concord Monitor

An odd couple for sure, but you’ll have your choice starting Oct. 1, when a restaurant named Madear’s Southern Eatery and Bakery opens on Main Street in Pembroke. It’s co-owned by Robb Curry, a Cajun cook from Baton Rouge, and Kyle Davis, a baker from the Granite State.

They’ll combine their skills, offering a fresh, new combination under one roof that Curry insists will blend together and belong together like that great American lunch, the fluffernutter. Have some gator and red velvet cake. You’ll see.

“If someone says, ‘I want some gumbo, I want some crawfish,’ we can make this a destination spot for them,” Curry said. “We have the space to do a bakery too, and I wanted to get between Concord and Manchester, because there is big void here and this was a gap we could fill, and Pembroke is the quintessential small town.”

With race relations dominating the news, Curry made sure to point out that he is Black and Davis is white, as if to show harmony is possible. The two men are lifelong partners.

Add an attempt to open a business during the pandemic, and Curry and Davis are a walking billboard of current events, economically, politically, culturally.

The men began leasing a spot in February, a month before COVID hit. They filled out paperwork, played phone tag with the state and waited for restaurant doors to open to full capacity, setting Oct. 1 for their debut.

“It was challenging,” Davis said. “We were working with state and local agencies, and with no office hours it took five times longer to get something done. But we got through it and it was good timing for us. People are feeling more comfortable about going out.”

Curry says New Hampshire has cradled him as one of its own since arriving with Davis from Boston in 2016.

“I’ve gotten more support and enthusiasm for me being just me,” Curry told me. “This is a community to me. I’m on the city planning board, and we both founded the Queen City Pride Festival.”

That’s an annual celebration of the LGBTQ community. Their roots in the Manchester area began years after both traveled circuitous paths to get here.

Davis grew up in Hudson and graduated from Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua. He studied engineering at Northeastern University in Boston and in fact became a professional in the field, designing train stations down there.

But, through the years, Davis never forgot those days in the kitchen, where his mother and grandmother taught him how to bake. The smell of warm cookies and powered sugar remain palpable in his mind.

Then his two children noticed how happy their dad was when he baked, as compared to the suit-and-tie dad, the engineer. They said something to him.

“The way to get away from engineering was baking, and I wanted to do that on a large scale,” Davis said. “My kids encouraged me to take the next step. They encouraged me to bake at home, and I baked everything. They could see how excited I was, but I never thought about taking that next step.”

At the time, Davis was supplying Curry with cookies, cakes and pies for Curry’s catering service in Boston. They fell in love and saw something up ahead, on the horizon.

“It was easier from a community standpoint to come to New Hampshire,” Davis said. “What drew us to Manchester was it was eclectic and diverse.”

First, they opened a restaurant, a similar style to Southern Eatery, in Manchester. Who knew the Granite State was receiving a cook from Louisiana? But it did, bringing, as Curry told me, “the only food that is unique to the United States. Most of the others come from other cuisine that is based in Europe, in Spain or France. The food is a melting pot of different things. Many cultures that make up one dish.”

He gave credit to his grandmothers, Ruthie May and Martha Sullivan. He said he held onto their apron strings in Baton Rouge, learning everything he could about rice and chicken and crawfish and gumbo.

Sullivan, the matriarch and leader of the family, was known as Madear, a term of endearment and respect reserved for those held in extreme reverence only.

Poof. Curry had his name. “She was sweet as pie,” Curry told me, “and I learned a lot from her.”

He said the name came to him quickly. Madear showed her grandson how to make fried chicken, gumbo, Jambalaya, those things you already know something about and can pronounce.

Then came a dish from Mars. Baton Rouge, actually, something that had to be spelled for me three times and pronounced another three times. This is N’awlins stuff.

Etouffee?

“A light sauce with crawfish,” Curry said, “served over rice.”

He’s called crawfish “mudbugs” since childhood. He cleaned toilets at Burger King as a kid. He was a beverage manager, a server, a bartender, at a bar owned by his mother. He’d cook and do dishes. Owning a restaurant seeped into his DNA.

Curry and Davis ran their catering/bakery business in Boston for seven years. They opened a Madear’s in Manchester, citing its diversity and eclectic vibe.

Now they’re here, a more rural and folksy environment with more space to breathe. They’re in love and combining their loves, and they think it’s a winning formula that will create a long shelf life.

Like a fluffernutter.

“We both had good childhoods,” Curry said. “Cooking, baking, Sunday dinners with family, community. That’s the way we ate and lived, and it’s what we’re trying to do with Madear’s.”