It is actually collard greens and black-eyed peas. The greens represent dollars you’ll get in the next year and the peas coins.
I am originally from the South, and the story I heard for why black-eyed peas are good luck are related in the Wikipedia article:
Supposedly the northern troops didn’t recognize the black-eyed pea as being a crop that was suitable for human consumption, so they didn’t burn the black-eyed pea fields or pillage those crops. So that’s what kept people alive through the winter of 1864-65.
This story was also included on the menu of a southern chain of restaurants called, appropriately enough, the Black-Eyed Pea. I first remember reading it on a menu in the mid-80s. (The chain used to be pretty widespread throughout the south, but I see they are down to just one restaurant in Texas, with the rest in Colorado for some reason.)
Same here. I don’t care about tradition, they’re delicious.
They were pretty good. They served sweet tea in Mason jars, and cornbread in baskets.
Agreed. And great chicken-fried steak, which you could only find in the South back in the ‘80s. My grandparents took me there for a meal when I was visiting prospective universities in Texas, and I swear it was a factor in my deciding to move back to Texas for college. In fact, I’m pretty sure that very meal in 1986 was when I read the story about black-eyed peas being good luck.
Nowadays (and for the last 20-30 years), the Black-Eyed Pea restaurant has been supplanted in Houston by the Saltgrass Steak House, which is also pretty good, and which also has great chicken-fried steak.
Oh, that’s a good point on the chicken fried steak. Good chicken fried steak is hard to find…for a while my favorite was Threadgills, but the last time I was in Austin we went there and it was awful.
We are back in Austin next month to visit friends, I may have to give Saltgrass a try. If they have one there. (I see it’s up on Research, a little out-of-the-way, but maybe…)
My current favorite when I visit family in Houston is Mia’s Table. It’s a little more casual, like an upscale diner rather than a steakhouse. But the food is fantastic, especially the chicken-fried steak.
Saltgrass does a decent CFS for the Houston area. Mia’s table is counter service but ok as well. Probably better than Saltgrass, actually, unless you’re looking for an actual grilled steak (the Shiner Bock Bread is also really good). Hickory Hollow is better than both but a bit out of the way for me, while Live Oak Grill is much closer.
In the Austin area, maybe a Jack Allen’s. That should be a better one. Not sure where the best ones are out there
Same for me in SoCal. I might’ve heard the name “black-eyed peas” sometime before leaving SoCal for USAF after grad school, but maybe not. My crash engagement with all things southern / midwestern occurred shortly thereafter in Oklahoma. My first encounter with grits, chicken / country fried steak, biscuits as breakfast food, country gravy, etc. And black-eyed peas. All of which I’ve enjoyed since the first bite.
It was a couple years later that I first heard of the New Year’s tradition involving collard greens. Which are one southern food I do not like at all.
I’m sure you’re right.
We had a Black Eyed Pea restaurant in Phoenix metro for a while. I loved it, but I thought it “was just a clever name”, and didn’t know it was a chain. I must have been the only one that liked it, because it has been long closed. I never ate BEPs there, though.
Some research shows they (BEP) got started in 1975, sorta peaked around 1990ish, got sold by the founders to a conglomerate, and had crashed by 2001.
I too remember a few of them in some metro area where I lived. Probably Phoenix or Las Vegas.
I was surprised to see a BEP restaurant in Orlando when I moved there in 1991. I remember that it was just okay—not great. Long gone now, of course.
Yeah, that’s how I feel about most chains I frequent and how I remember BEP. I don’t remember ever choosing to go there, instead going when someone else wanted to. The last time I ate at a BEP was Thanksgiving 1996. My father died not too long before Thanksgiving and nobody really felt like making an effort for the holiday, so off to BEP we went.
The late 70 to early 90s seemed to be a heyday for local what I call “Better than Denny’s” to get started, grow to regional mediocrity, then either fade or get bought by one of the early “fast casual” holding companies.
Perkins, Village Inn, BEP, Marie Callender’s were ones I recall from places I lived in that era. I’m sure folks from other regions have a very different personal batch of long-dead memories.
Some of us might enjoy the List of defunct restaurants of the United States - Wikipedia.
According to Wiki, Village Inn still has 116 locations in 19 states. So still alive and well, although probably not quite as large as it once was.
Bakers Square (originally Poppin’ Fresh Pies, when they were owned by Pillsbury) dates from then, too; they were, for years, owned by the same company which owned Village Inn, and it looks like Bakers Square and Village Inn are still under the same ownership.
In the '80s and '90s, they were huge in the Midwest, and they were one of my wife’s and my favorite casual restaurants back then. They’ve shrunk down to basically nothing now, with less than a dozen standalone locations (and a few dozen Famous Dave’s BBQ restaurants which offer their pies).
They were big in California as well, because they bought out the mostly unlamented and very, very unfortunately named Sambo’s (‘Black people love eating here!’ They actually trotted that one out). Pies were decent enough, I guess. But yeah, ‘better than Denny’s’ was pretty much the standard. And that’s was a mighty low bar to step over back then.
Another ‘better than Denny’s’ that I ate at in CA was Lyon’s. Not because I loved the food, though it was better than Denny’s (and pricier to accommodate). But because I discovered the local one always served very stiff cocktails when I was going through a frou-frou daiquiri phase in my twenties 
. Good on them for not skimping on the booze.
There was a Black Eyed Pea restaurant in Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Cabot.
Maybe more locations. I only visited those three occasionally. Good Southern food.
I had trouble with consistency in Little Rock. Sometime the food wasn’t hot and service poor.
I usually went to NLR.
The old location in Cabot is an IHOP now.
I’m 52, lived my whole life in NJ. I’ve never had a black eyed pea, nor had I heard about this tradition until this thread.
There are two Cracker Barrels I believe within about an hour or so drive of here.
To me, Black Eyed Peas are a music group. Never heard of the food, until I listened to the group. Never heard of any New Year tradition until this thread.