[Debbie Elliott:] For today's food moment, we go to a military base in Fort Drum, New York. It's a mostly white, rural place, so a lot of the Southerners and Latinos who are posted there find themselves pining away for their comfort food. North Country public radio's David Sommerstein reports on two women who started a restaurant for the soldiers' stomachs and spirits.
[David Sommerstein:] In the kitchen of Willie Mae's Restaurant, Valerie Perry plates sticky barbeque ribs, steaming cornbread, and homemade mac and cheese.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] [unintelligible] for the soul food side.
[David Sommerstein:] Okay, this is for the soul food side.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] I'm come on, one more minute.
[David Sommerstein:] Perry serves the table of four and scolds one guy for leaving his collard greens.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] You didn't finish your greens, Gary. What's the problem here?
[David Sommerstein:] Willie Mae's is a two-in-one joint. Perry satisfies African-American soul food lovers. Lucy Ruiz makes Puerto Rican soul food. She plops plantains in a deep fryer, then flips a golden-brown pork chop in a skillet.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] This is all Hispanic, and I read ingredients in Hispanic.
[David Sommerstein:] Valerie and Lucy insist this is two restaurants. Separate checks. They even buy different chicken. And they're picky about each other's food.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] Well, you see, I don't like her collard greens.
[David Sommerstein:] You don't like those collard greens?
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] No. I'm not a collard greens person.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] And I don't like rice.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] I cook a lot of rice.
[David Sommerstein:] And you don't like rice?
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] I don't like rice.
[David Sommerstein:] How do you guys even get along?
[Ms. Ruiz:] Oh.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] Because I don't have to put up with the guys. We can't help but get along.
[David Sommerstein:] Faith brought these two women together. Valerie's pastor of a Pentecostal church in nearby Watertown. Lucy's sister is pastor of her church.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] So that's how we met. We had a women's conference and that was...
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] Oh, my God.
[Ms. Ruiz:] ...it was the Holy Ghost there.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] Yes.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] Oh, my Lord.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] Hallelujah.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] Praise the Lord.
[David Sommerstein:] Now their ministry offers soldiers culinary salvation.
[Ms. Inez Babbin:] I swear in upper New York there's no food that tastes good to me like Southern food. This tastes good.
[David Sommerstein:] Inez Babbin of Louisiana brought fellow soldier Anthony Carter of Florida to try Willie Mae's. Carter says he feels right at home.
[Mr. Anthony Carter:] When I first walked in, it was kind of a home feeling, you know, like, you know what I'm saying, my grandmamma, aunties, they up in the kitchen, my mamma, you know what I'm saying she up in there cooking from scratch.
[David Sommerstein:] Valerie and Lucy spend as much time in the dining room as the kitchen. They say they need to minister to soldiers' spirits, not just their bellies, especially the ones who return from Iraq and Afghanistan.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] Yes, when you go over there...
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] And you come back, they it's a bewildered look about some of them, and...
[David Sommerstein:] Really, you see it?
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] I see it, as pastor I see that.
[David Sommerstein:] Lucy says after lunch they listen and soldiers talk.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] [unintelligible] two hours just talking.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] We just talk.
[Ms. Lucy Ruiz:] Just talking. They just letting themselves everything out.
[Ms. Valerie Perry:] This is a place of a outlet for people on post, and we just give them what the word of God has to say.
[David Sommerstein:] Lucy Ruiz says just the other day a soldier had a religious conversion right there in the dining room amidst rice and beans and fried chicken, and that, says Pastor Valerie Perry, is soul food. For NPR News, I'm David Sommerstein in Northern New York.