Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Aisha Murff, owner of Haire’s Gulf Shrimp, makes fried shrimp in the restaurant at 7448 S. Vincennes Ave. in Chatham on the South Side, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times When Aisha Murff suddenly found herself at the helm of a well-known South Side shrimp shack, she hadn’t run a restaurant but knew she’d better learn. Murff, the Los Angeles-born daughter of an actress, became the owner of Haire’s Gulf Shrimp when her husband, Finnie Haire, died in 2021, leaving her a Greater Grand Crossing institution that was decades old and built on a recipe carried over in the Great Migration. “It is literally Black history keeping it going,” Murff said. She signed up for business courses, and the best among them for her new role was the FoodLab Chicago program from the Greater Chatham Initiative economic development group. The FoodLab program aims to grow South Side food businesses by teaching aspects of the industry that owners who got into it more for the food might overlook. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Tamieka Hardy, program manager at the Greater Chatham Initiative’s FoodLab Chicago program, stands in Chatham on the South Side, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times The […]
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