Florence’s Soul Wingery: Where Food and Music Feed the Heart
Red Velvet Chicken and Waffles from Soul Wingery.
Thaddeus Rowell was twenty-five when he decided to fry up a dream. Folks around town know him by his stage name, Thad Saajid. Music and food for the soul have always been a part of who he is. Thad’s cooking started as a passion handed down from his mama and his grandma, two women who could turn flour and cornmeal into comfort. Music was what he studied, but food was what found him.
“I figured I could teach anytime in my life,” he said. “But this? This was the time to try.”
That was 2017. The building he found had been sitting quiet for fifteen years, dust settled where stories used to live. He called the owner, said he wanted to buy it. She said okay. What he didn’t know then was how much red tape there’d be—licenses, inspections, all the hoops that come with turning an idea into a place. But he learned. Every year since, he’s been learning.
The night he opened, there wasn’t a plan or a grand opening. Just a gig at UNA, a packed house, and a wild idea. “I looked at the crowd,” he said, “and thought, I’m just gonna open tonight.” He finished the set, took the mic, and told everyone, if you’re hungry, come on by in about an hour.
By ten o’clock the doors were open. By midnight the place was filled with friends, students and strangers standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting on wings and fries from a kitchen run by him, his buddy Davian, and his mama. “We were swamped. Kicked. But man, it was beautiful.”
Fried Green Tomatoes freshly handpicked by Thad himself (Grandma’s recipe)!
From the start, he kept the menu simple. “I hate going somewhere with a thousand things on it,” he said. “You can’t be good at all of ’em.” So he stuck to what he knew. Chicken, fries, a few sides were the focus and Thad got real good at them. Chicken and waffles were there from day one, and they’ve stayed ever since. Fried green tomatoes have been there from the beginning as a quiet nod to his grandmother’s kitchen.
Thad’s grandmother was about four-eleven, had fifteen kids, and didn’t take nonsense from anybody. Summers were spent at her house, watching her move through the kitchen like she was playing an instrument she’d mastered long ago. She grew what she cooked, cooked what she grew, and nothing went to waste. “She’d send us walking to the store half a mile down the road,” he said. “Cornmeal and flour was all she needed.”
Those memories are still in every plate he serves, though his own cooking has stretched and grown. He went down to New Orleans for a summer once to take cooking classes and chase flavor. “That changed my palate,” he said. “I started using spices my grandma never had, but the foundation stayed the same: simple food, cooked with care.”
You can’t step inside Soul Wingery without feeling the rich legacy of music. Records line the walls including old sleeves his parents once owned. “My dad was a musician,” he said. “These were his. We couldn’t find the records, so I hung the covers. Now they’re part of the place.”
He still buys and sells vinyl, mostly used, mostly soul, gospel, and R&B. The kind of sound that pairs well with good food and long afternoons. “They already exist,” he said. “Might as well keep them spinning.”
How do these two passions coexist so effortlessly? “Both music and food bring comfort. You can’t afford a therapist? Make a playlist. Bad day? Eat something you love. It changes your whole attitude. When you take care of your physical, the spiritual lines up right behind it.”
Most weeks Thad brings something new to the table to create a reason to always come back. Items like pumpkin-spice chicken and waffles in October, gumbo when the weather turns, or a firepit night when it’s cold enough to pull on a jacket but not too cold to stay awhile.
“I love when people just come, eat, listen, and be,” he said. “That’s what this place is about.”
Stop by Soul Wingery in Florence, Alabama, where good food, good music, and good people remind you to slow down and replenish your soul.
