Shayla Streater pictured with friends Hafeeza Turé and Arden Santana in 2022. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
Shayla Streater can already see the dinner unfolding before her. On one end of the table, old friends and new sit shoulder to shoulder, their hands hovering over oyster mushrooms and okra stew. On the other, someone has just bitten into a root vegetable empanada, and turns the flavor over in their mouth, savoring it. Nearby, storyteller Bruce Trammell, Sr. prepares to speak, his voice holding decades of New Haven history.
That’s the dream behind “A Seat at the Table: Breaking Bread Remix,” a series from Streater that puts plant-based food, the power of storytelling, and New Haven’s cherished elders all in conversation with each other. Inspired by her own journey through food and family, the series is meant to raise awareness around both physical and emotional health, from food’s curative properties to the way people show up for each other.
It begins Saturday afternoon, with food from Chef Justin “J-Infuse” Hernandez and an initial story from Trammell, a beloved fatherhood coach and advocate in New Haven (his claim to fame may be teaching chess to hundreds, in not thousands, of young New Haveners). It is a project of Streater’s budding venture Div9ine Enterventions, which seeks to recognize and nurture the divine inherent in all people. Tickets and more information are available here.
“This event was a vision that came to me through meditation,” said Streater on a recent episode of “Arts Respond” on WNHH Community Radio. “I saw my elders coming together, I saw the community coming together, and I saw us eating together, like breaking bread.”
“At the end of the day, it’s about bringing the community [together],” she later added. “It’s time to heal. It’s time to heal. It’s time to heal through conversation, it’s time to have a safe space to just be. Just be. Be your authentic self. There’s no judgement … that’s really what this is about.”
Saturday, that will mean a four-hour cultural and culinary odyssey, beginning with a two-hour cooking class with Hernandez—based on some of Trammell’s favorites—and ending with a night bathed in story. In the middle, attendees will sit down and eat together, regrouping before Trammell takes the stage. Together, the night is meant to both gather and educate the community, giving people the tools to better care for themselves and for each other.
But Streater’s journey to “A Seat At The Table” is a much longer one. While the series unfolds just in time for the rebirth and renewal of springtime, the inspiration behind it has been percolating for years, since she turned to plant-based food as a way to heal herself. At the time, Streater was recovering from the birth of her third child, a daughter who had been born prematurely.
It was a hard recovery. Streater—who is also statistically less likely to be believed in the American medical system because she is a Black woman—had developed preeclampsia, a dangerous type of high blood pressure that is caused by the stress of pregnancy on the body. In giving life to her daughter, she had almost lost hers. In the weeks and months that followed, one of her doctors predicted that she would never be able to come off medications that helped control her blood pressure following the diagnosis.
But “no’ was not acceptable for me,” Streater remembered. She began to research ways to care for herself beyond medication. She learned how to ask for support, and how to make cooking into a ritual. She started going to farmers’ markets. She also started reading food labels, cooking from scratch and picking out seasonal vegetables, teaching her own children to cook as they got older.
“It’s a way of living, right?” she said, describing everything from homemade barbecue tofu to vegan collard greens with onions, peppers and a hint of liquid smoke. “It’s not a diet. It’s a way of living. And you do have to be gentle when you’re going into this.”
That period of her life is also where the concept of breaking bread comes from. Close to a decade ago, Streater started gathering with a friend, educator and SĀHGE Academy founder Arden Santana, to break bread once a week. It was never fancy: the two pulled from fridge and pantry staples to create a meal. It created a sense of shared community that also let them breathe a little more easily. Meanwhile, their kids got to play together.
“From that, it blossomed,” she said. In 2022, while she was still part of The Elements of Abundance, the idea took root in Hamden’s Town Center Park, among tall, lush late summer grass and a playground filled with laughter. Three years and one venture later, this is its newest form.
In addition to her elders, who she credits constantly, she nodded to the work of the small business incubator Collab, which helped her build Div9ine Enterventions in early 2024. Collab has since joined forces with the Hartford-based organization reSet.
A year later, she said, she’s thrilled to be kicking off the series with Hernandez, who she first met at the Westville-based business BLOOM several years ago. In advance of Saturday’s event, the two worked together to build a menu based on one of Trammell’s most beloved dishes, chicken and dumplings.
Because it is “the remix,” Streater said, it will include oyster mushroom dumplings and okra stew with biscuits, “rooted” vegetable empanadas, fried plantains in fresh, zingy sofrito and crunchy coleslaw with fresh cabbage. After months crafting and recrafting the event, she said, she’s ready.
“We heal through storytelling,” she said. “We find that we have similar stories, and that’s like, wow—that’s something similar to what I’m going through. You hear how someone, they triumphed through that. It’s like, you’re not alone in that situation. You don’t feel alone. You’re sharing that experience with other people.”
"Arts Respond" is a collaboration between WNHH-LP 103.5 FM New Haven and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven.