Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude Tate: Assigning Meaning to Every Plate

Food with Mark Bittman

Sweetness and Light

Nutrition, Arts, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Food, Culture, Cooking

4.8 • 981 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The chefs, and owners of Philly's much-loved Honeysuckle, talk to Kate and Mark about how they personally define a "Black" dish; the two very distinct formats behind the food that typically represents the US Black diaspora; why their original business model didn't work and how they fixed it—and learned from it; and their big love story.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Food with Mark Bittman. I'm Kate Bittman. Thanks for being here. We know how many of you are loyal listeners and we appreciate that so much. If you'd like to hear more from Mark and me and our small but mighty team, check us out on bitmanproject.com. When you subscribe there, you'll get access to our recipe database, which now has thousands of recipes, with more added weekly.
0:27.5	If you prefer a substack experience, we're on there, too, bitmanproject.substack.com.
0:34.2	Reach out to us with any questions, comments, or stuff you think should be featured on the podcast or on our site, food at markbitman.com.
1:09.4	Thank you. We have been wanting to have today's guests on for so long, and we finally did the interview with them last week, and it was honestly even better than I thought it would be.
1:12.6	I know I say that a lot, but I mean it,
1:19.8	and I mean it every time. I think, too, that this is the first time we've had a married couple on the show, so that's fun. Today's guests are food heroes and chefs, Omar Tate and
1:27.3	Sybil St. Odd Tate, of the much-loved honeysuckle.
1:31.8	Omar and Sybil started honeysuckle in their hometown of Philly in 2022 as an Afrocentric grocer and
1:39.0	cafe, and in 2025, they transitioned the shop into a full-service restaurant dedicated to black cultural preservation and centering around the values of ancestry, nourishment, and reclamation.
1:54.7	Honeycuckles food is rooted in black food traditions, featuring seasonal ingredients sourced from a network of black farmers and from
2:02.7	its own farm in rural Pennsylvania. And it's inspired by Omar's southern and Philly roots
2:09.7	and Sybil's Haitian heritage. Omar has been named a Pew Fellow and Esquire's Chef of the
2:16.7	Year and more. Sybil has been named Women of Fellow and Esquire's Chef of the Year and more.
2:22.5	Sybil has been named Women of Distinction Rising Star by Philadelphia Business Journal,
2:26.9	hospitality star of the year by Philadelphia Citizen and more. But even better, these two warm-hearted humans also have three kids,
2:32.6	and they manage to balance their time, taking care of
2:35.6	their sons, while also running honeysuckle. My dad has known and been friends with Omar for a while
2:41.9	now, and we're both so glad that we finally got our shit together and scheduled this interview.
2:48.6	I'm so happy to meet you both after hearing so much about you for a really long time.
2:54.7	So glad we were able to make this happen.
2:56.9	Yeah.
2:58.0	That's true.
	...

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