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Today I looked up the theme song to the TV series The Jeffersons (1975–1985) because I never quite understood two lines.

The theme song is:

Well we're movin' on up, to the east side
To a deluxe apartment in the sky
Movin on up
To the east side
We finally got a piece of the pie
Fish don't fry in the kitchen;
Beans don't burn on the grill
Took a whole lotta tryin'
Just to get up that hill
Now we're up in the big leagues
Gettin' our turn at bat
As long as we live, it's you and me baby
There ain't nothin wrong with that
Well we're movin on up
To the east side
To a deluxe apartment in the sky
Movin on up
To the east side
We finally got a piece of the pie

The lines I never understood were:

Fish don't fry in the kitchen;

Beans don't burn on the grill

Those lines are in the present tense, not the past or future tense.

The past tense says that once they were too poor to afford fish and beans. The future tense says that now they will be rich enough to afford better food than fish and beans. The present tense is ambiguous.

So after 50 years, I ask what those lines about fish and beans mean.

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This is obviously a reference to bougie, they switch over to more expensive ingredients and cuisines.

If I remember right Mr. J eats a lot of fine steaks and drinks wine and such. Ja'net DuBois says that she didn't know much about the show when she wrote the song… Just that it was about a man with a cleaning business.

As a side note, her character on Good Times loved soul food. (I do too!)

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According to Genius:

The Jeffersons are an African American family who opened a dry cleaning chain and were able to move from a lower class neighborhood in Queens, to Manhattan. Their new lifestyle allowed them to afford a maid and dine out more often. As a result, they no longer needed to fry fish and cook beans at home.

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    I think that's on the right track, but it seems focused almost exclusively on the Jefferson's socioeconomic climb. I've always assumed that fried fish and beans are intended to represent not only poverty but also their culture and community. Their new deluxe apartment neighbors don't fry fish and grill beans just because they can afford to eat out—for all we know, they're grilling steak and steaming lobster. (In fact, didn't Harry Bentley dabble in cooking?) The lyric highlights the contrast between the world the Jeffersons have experienced and the one they've entered. Commented yesterday
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    -1 for just quoting a non-authoritative source without any further evidence or analysis. Commented 17 hours ago

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