Forty Acres Fresh Market introduces an impressive, tiny but mighty, hot bar with Mabel’s Meals, honoring a family matriarch and casual culinary culture in Chicago.
The market on the West Side is somehow the only Black-owned grocery store in the city. The owner and operator of the independent business in the Austin neighborhood is also a woman.
Liz Abunaw launched Forty Acres as a pop-up market in 2018, expanding to delivery service in 2019. She launched the brick-and-mortar store in September 2025.
So what’s the meaning behind Forty Acres?
It references Union Army General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 in 1865, she said, following the capture of the port of Savannah, Georgia. It was an allotment for some freed families for up to 40 acres and provision of a mule. So it became known as “40 acres and a mule.”“It ties back to where our food comes from, and it’s a name rooted in history that would be very familiar to Black people,” said Abunaw. “And since I am Black, and I wanted to open a store in a Black neighborhood, well, there you go.”
She’s also firmly rooted in the present and wanted to be able to compete with other grocers.
“Mariano’s has a hot bar, Pete’s has a hot bar and Jewel’s,” she said. “Whole Foods is like a restaurant, let’s be real.”
When I say she wants to compete, Abunaw is competitive.
“When I eat from other grocery stores, it is OK, it’s edible, it’ll get me by,” she said. “So I knew that if we had really good food, it would set us apart.”
And Forty Acres does make really — really — good food. I tried everything from Mabel’s Meals, the hot bar in back, which offered a lot more than I expected. The team at the store has created an experience and sense of community that has me rooting for our future.
Mabel‘s fried chicken, golden and tender, has become the most sought-after item.
“We’ve had people come in to look for the fried chicken, and if it’s not there, they will walk out the store,” said Abunaw. “And I’m like, you know, we have other things, right?”
Packaged for grab-and-go, four pieces to an order (a half chicken with a leg, thigh, wing and breast), it’s not Harold’s fried hard, but a perfectly done crust that holds its own.
Chef Martell Cammon, a quietly commanding presence in the small open kitchen, had to convince the new grocery store owner to sell fried chicken.
“All the recipes are his,” said Abunaw. “He has worked at Whole Foods, he’s worked at Mariano’s.”
But Cammon’s mother is the one who turned her son on to cooking. She’s worked at Jewel’s deli prepared food section for years. When Cammon was testing his fried chicken recipes, he would bring them to her to taste test until she finally approved.
The Coco Bowl, however, with a lovely coconut curry sauce over your choice of white or yellow rice, came from an idea by Abunaw. I highly recommend a side of the made-to-order black-eyed pea fritters to complement the crispy fried chickpeas and lush cilantro aioli.
“I would love our signature item to be the rice bowls,” she said. “We don’t have a huge staff, so I wanted to keep the menu tight and from a cost perspective, that works.”
As a Chinese person, I would love that too, because rice is life.
“As a West African, we feel the same,” said Abunaw, who is Cameroonian.
So who is Mabel?
“Mabel is the name of our mule,” said the store owner about their mascot. And Mabel was Abunaw’s late great-grandmother’s name.
“My dad always talked about how good nana could cook,” she said. “My mom says the dish she remembers most from nana was Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day.”
Mabel Patton Wells made the legendary dish with traditional rice and black-eyed peas, and her variation included ham hocks.
“I named the mule Mabel before the hot food department even existed,” said Abunaw. “Because there’s a saying in Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ that says, ‘Black women are the mules of the earth.’”
At the mighty Mabel’s Meals, The Morning Glory breakfast sandwich rivals any around the city. A hearty telera roll holds delicately scrambled eggs, fresh spinach, herbaceous dill havarti cheese, sriracha-spiked mayo and aromatic ribbons of pickled red onion. You can add sliced smoked turkey, but you should definitely get the glorious house-made, kettle-style potato chips seasoned with barbecue spices and lemon pepper.
Mabel’s jerk chicken, seriously spiced, is the second most popular bird on the menu. The Jamaican-inspired chicken is served as a half bird, as is the juicy rotisserie chicken. The latter is seasoned well, and notably not too salty.
Extras, or sides, available at the hot bar include velvety vegan collard greens, superbly cheesy mac and cheese, softly chunky mashed potatoes and two kinds of colossal cornbread muffins: honey butter and jalapeño cheddar.
Drop the Beet and 24 Carrot Gold are among the radiant juices by produce and floral department manager Eric Frantz. He starts them all with fresh-squeezed orange juice, then mixes in ruby red beet, carrot and ginger, or other house-made juices.
The Best-Side Bowl, with those gorgeous collard greens and a creamy mushroom sauce, is the most popular rice bowl, but I’m one of those people who finds that baby carrots taste too raw, no matter how much they’ve been roasted with honey butter. The vegan Bayou Bowl, with impeccably roasted okra and a gumbo sauce, seems a little light compared with the other substantial bowls. You can add protein with those fantastic black-eyed pea fritters, or generous sides of pulled roasted chicken thighs, stewed beef or pork carnitas.
Near the hot bar, next to the fresh meat and seafood counter, you’ll find a cold prepared foods case.
“The ribs sell really well there,” said Abunaw. “If they make it out of the hot bar.” That’s saying something with the steady stream of customers at Coleman’s Bar-B-Que #2 right up the street. The Forty Acres full slab and half slab of baby backs are cooked low and slow in the oven, so they’re missing smoke, but do tug nicely off the bone.
The broccoli salad, done Midwestern-style with comfort and mayo, which chef Cammon told me was the bestselling house-made cold case item, was in fact a sleeper hit. Loaded with verdant florets and bacon bits, I ate most of it with those crackling potato chips.
I had no idea how much they made in-house, and it’s still a challenge to find any menus for Mabel’s Meals, much less the cold case. But a website upgrade is in the works. As is the liquor department, which will have spirits, wine and beer for consumption off premises, now that they have a city license.
Meanwhile, you can immediately consume the giant house-made cookies. I tore through all six flavors, from a buttery sugar cookie to triple chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, white chocolate macadamia nut, Reese’s peanut butter to a delightful cookies and cream cookie.
Pair them with a smooth Kribi cold brew, canned and unsweetened, from the grocery side. The local Black family-owned coffee business sources beans from Cameroon. They roast nearby with a location in Oak Park.
Customers come to the market from the adjacent suburb, and many Austin residents walk to the store. Some started asking for turkey chops in the meat department. So now butcher Ilya Bonel, who previously worked at The Butcher & Larder at Local Foods, cuts them in-house.
Forty Acres has a long-lost Local Foods meets Trader Joe’s vibe. It’s an inspiring, airy space of reclaimed adaptive architecture. The four-seat dining counter in front is just enough for now.
“We don’t have 50,000 square feet to carry every single item that’s under the sun,” said Abunaw. “What we can offer that no one else does is a shopping experience.”
There’s discovery, she said, there’s a relationship.
“I’m so tired of the talk of food deserts, and I just want people to know this is a really freaking awesome grocery store,” she added. “And it offers something you’re not going to get elsewhere, and that’s a value to pretty much anyone.”
Forty Acres Fresh Market
5713 W. Chicago Ave.
312-994-2920
Open: Daily 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (Mabel’s Meals hot bar breakfast sandwiches from 8 to 10 a.m. and rice bowls from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.)
Prices: $6.99 (Morning Glory breakfast sandwich), $9.99 (Coco Bowl), $2 (black-eyed pea fritters), $5.99 (hot four-piece fried chicken), $7.99 per pound (house-made lemon pepper/barbecue potato chips), $8.99 per pound (cold broccoli salad), $4.99 (Drop the Beet and 24 Carrot Gold fresh-squeezed juices), $3 (cookies and cream cookie), $2.50 (sugar, white chocolate macadamia nut, oatmeal raisin, triple chocolate chip, Reese’s peanut butter cookies, each)
Sound: OK (64 to 66 dB)
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on one level, and motorized shopping cart available
Tribune rating: Two and a half stars, very good to excellent
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; zero stars, unsatisfactory.
Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
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