Arts & Culture | The Hill | Culinary Arts | COVID-19 | Sandra's Next Generation
Chris Noel Photo, courtesy Sandra Harris-Pittman.
Hill restauranteur Sandra Harris-Pittman is selling a new spice mix this holiday season. By now, she knows the ingredients by heart.
A dash of paprika, sweet and a little hot to the tastebuds as soon as it hits. A sprinkle of sea salt and pinch of garlic. The smell of side dishes, family dinners, Saturday cooking experiments and over three decades of New Haven history.
That’s the recipe for Harris-Pittman’s Mac N’ Cheese seasoning, the first spice mix to come out of her kitchen and into homes as she cooks into the holiday season. Harris-Pittman and her husband Miguel Pittman run Sandra’s Next Generation on Congress Avenue in the city’s Hill neighborhood. This year, the restaurant turned 31 in the midst of a pandemic.
“I just felt that the timing was right,” she said in a phone call Friday. “I wanted to do the idea years ago. The timeliness fits right now. Even though I'm busy, even though I’m teaching cooking classes, people with this pandemic need something.”
For Harris-Pittman, the blend has been decades in the making. The chef grew up as one of six kids in the city’s Dwight neighborhood, where Edgewood Avenue meets the far edge of downtown.
Perched at the front of the Dwight Gardens Co-Op, the Harris home was always filled with the sound of laughter and smell of warm food. At the center of it all was her mom, Mary Harris. Years later, Harris-Pittman’s brother and sister-in-law opened a Whalley Avenue soul food restaurant Mama Mary's in her honor.
Harris moved to New Haven from Selma, Ala. in 1958. She took the cuisine with her: macaroni and cheese, black eyed peas, collard greens and fried chicken that became legendary. Once a week, residents of the building’s 67 units would flock to her apartment for a hot meal and a greeting from Mary Harris. By the time she was eight, Harris-Pittman had started to absorb that culinary alchemy by simply watching her mother in the kitchen.
It started with mac and cheese. On Saturdays, she studied her mother’s movements as she heated the cream and mixed in cheese. She watched for spices and scrutinized amounts. She experimented, trying to get a recipe that conjured family dinners at her mother’s table. As a teenager, she started cooking and selling $5 dinners, sometimes making up to $400 a week.
“I think that what makes a dish special is the love and passion that she has for cooking,” she said. “I really do. You want to make it where it reminds people of their mother or their grandmother. for that split second, it reminds them of their loved one.”
She met Miguel—her voice still turns to sweet tea when she refers to him as “the love of my life”—when she was 19. In 1989, the two started their restaurant on Congress Avenue, where it now sits between a foster care agency, a small market and a squat New Haven Police Department substation. She watched as news of her soul food spread across the city and business boomed. She said the spices are only part of her secret: her love of the food is another.
"It was the lion's den," she said. “The odds were against me in 1989. But I had faith, and I knew God was with me.”
Three decades and four children later, food has remained very much a family affair. Her mom, who is now 81, still makes the sweet potato pies for the restaurant (together, she and Harris-Pittman have turned out dozens for Thanksgiving). Her daughters Shante and Shar'wyn run catering and baking at the restaurant. Her brother Robert and sister-in-law Tanya run Mama Mary’s Soul Food on Whalley Avenue, where they've been for the last 12 years.
For years, she said, she has wanted to sell a spice blend to make customers feel like culinary family. But the timing never felt right: she was always whipping up recipes in the kitchen or doting on her family outside of it. When COVID-19 hit, the restaurant did a hard pivot to takeout and streamlined its online options with third-party delivery services. Harris-Pittman also started teaching weekly cooking classes and running social media campaigns. And yet, the idea wouldn't go away.
“I'm always mixing in the kitchen,” she said. “That's my comfort. That’s my peace—to put different blends, different herbs together. Nine times out of ten, I get it right the first time. I want everybody to have that experience.”
She started small, assembling just 50 containers. After announcing a limited run on social media, she sold out in under a week. Orders came from not just New Haven but around the state and the country. She plans to roll out another blend in December, this time for an all-purpose Caribbean-style seasoning.
The experience has left her feeling especially thankful “for the small things,” she said. She savors sunsets more often. She delights in seeing her four grandchildren. She catches up with friends on the phone and thinks about when they will be able to gather in person again. She marvels at how the restaurant has been able to stay afloat. To give back to the community on Thanksgiving day, she and Miguel plan to serve free, warm home cooked meals from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to anyone who stops by the shop.
And, she added, she's grateful for the symphony of flavors in her life. This year, Harris-Pittman plans host a much smaller Thanksgiving dinner than usual, complete with fried turkey, a honey baked ham, mac and cheese (“of course,” she laughed), green beans, pineapple coconut cake, and sweet potato pie.
She’ll take the evening off. Then she’ll get back in the kitchen and start working on the next seasoning.
“I'm really excited about it,” she said. “People are coming in, getting the seasoning, and they are really really happy. They get a taste of me in their homes. I can give out my ingredients, but they need to know how much to put in—that’s the secret. Everything I want to do is happening all at one time. I'm pumped up and so excited about what's taking place.”