Arts Paper
As the editorially independent arm of The Arts Council of Greater New Haven, the Arts Paper seeks to celebrate, explore, and investigate the fine, visual, performing and culinary arts in and around New Haven.
Shayla Streater pictured with friends Hafeeza Turé and Arden Santana in 2022. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
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Esther Chiang (right), Melanie Barocas Mayer, and Sherry Pocknett (left) make corn cakes. Photos Kapp Singer. Esther Chiang added a few cups of cornmeal, some baking soda, and a touch of salt and pepper to a bowl. She slowly poured in water until the mixture was the consistency of thick pancake batter. After stirring in a few scallions and cranberries, she scooped it into a hot pan. “I want to cook, I want to eat, and I want to hear the stories,” said Chiang, the food justice education coordinator at Common Ground High School. As she made corn cakes alongside two other volunteers, Chef Sherry Pocknett looked on, giving them tips—a little more water, a little hotter pan, “too much oil!” On Tuesday, the two came together at an Indigenous cooking workshop and dinner with Pocknett, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and the first Indigenous woman to receive a James Beard award. Held at Gateway Community College’s Cafe Vincenzo as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, the event brought in roughly fifty people. Diners enjoyed samples of venison skewers, salmon bites, and turkey meatballs. As they ate “Indian tacos” with fry bread and beef, blueberry fritters, and quahog fritters, Pocknett told stories about Indigenous cuisines of the Northeast and her own journey to becoming a chef. Diners line up to try the food. Her first food memory came on a trip she took with her father when she was eight, to Washburn Island off the southern end of Cape Cod. Her father dropped her and her siblings off on the island, gave them some matches and fishing line, and told them to fend for themselves. She remembers picking blueberries and digging for clams, quahogs, and mussels. “There was an abundance of food,” she said. “I learned well, and I try to teach my children the same.” Back at home, after receiving a Suzy Homemaker oven, she began cooking. She remembers stealing all the food out of the fridge at home and making a meal for her brothers. “I knew then I was going to be a chef,” she said with a laugh. As she grew up, she learned to cook at The Flume, her family’s restaurant on Cape Cod. Her uncle was the chef and her grandmother the baker. She eventually became the food and beverage director at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Ledyard, Connecticut. There, she transformed a menu of hotdogs and grilled cheese into one with dishes like turtle soup, venison, and smoked fish. In 2023, she received the prize for best chef in the Northeast category for her Charlestown, Rhode Island restaurant Sly Fox Den Too. The restaurant, which she opened in 2021, was meant to be a simple stepping stone for a larger farm-to-table location that she is planning to open in Preston, Connecticut. But while she fundraised to open the larger restaurant, her food started turning heads. “I got nominated and I was like ‘what the heck is the James Beard Award?’” she said. Pocknett. With the restaurant she is developing in Preston, she hopes to bring new life to the traditional foods of the Northeast. In addition to the dining room and kitchen, her plans include a cultural center and a two-and-a-half acre farm, which she’s already begun planting with raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and sassafras. “I’m hoping to bring the beach plums back,” Pocknett added. “I don’t notice so many on the Cape anymore.” Pocknett recounted that, since she grew up on Cape Cod, she’s seen the toll that environmental degradation takes on Indigenous food systems and traditions. The ponds she swam in as a child have since been contaminated by the area’s septic systems and fertilizer runoff from lawns and golf courses. Combined with warmer water temperatures, frequent blooms of toxic algae make swimming dangerous. “My grandkids can’t swim in that lake anymore,” she added. “It just makes me so sad what’s happening with the water.” Not only does the algae cause the pond to be unswimmable, but it also kills fish, frogs, and other animals and plants, disrupting traditional Mashpee Wampanoag foodways. “Instead of making that grass green, just plant some food. That grass is poison,” Pocknett said. Despite this, Pocknett’s visit to Arts & Ideas was one of hope. Just a week before coming to New Haven, she found out that she was cancer-free after a years-long battle with the disease. She is finishing her chemotherapy treatment next week, just as she turns 64. “I’m gonna live to see my new restaurant open,” Pocknett said, as tears welled up in her eyes. That hope found its way into the food on Tuesday. Diners scraped their plates clean and fresh corn cakes were passed around. “My mom always says you have to put love into your cooking,” said her daughter and business partner Cheyenne Galvin-Pocknett. “That energy goes into your food.”
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Remsen Welsh and Shane Quinn. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Shirley Chock teaches Liz Celotto how to use a tai chi fan. Photos Kapp Singer.
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Cherry blossoms in bloom on Hughes Place next to Wooster Square Park. Photos Kapp Singer.
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Adrienne Kane on a recent Sunday. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Ordinary Manager Ben Zemke and Owner Tim Cabral under the glow of vintage Christmas lights that are part of the Atomic Era vibes. Mindi Rose Englart photos.
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The inside of Fest Faves on a recent weekday. Laila Mohammed Photo.
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Synovia and Andrew Gibson with their sauce, Runny Novs. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Karima El-Hamraoui and Abir. Lucy Gellman Photos. Abir was performing alchemy in The Hill. Her hands fluttered over a pile of red and white onion, fine salt and flaked sumac coating the slices. She spoke in quiet tones as she worked, recounting bits of information about her children. A family of sunflowers bobbed deferentially in the background.
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Kevin Zhen sets the table for Homecooked. Karen Marks Photos.
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Sylvia and Jason Sobocinski in the cheese shop. “Lots of people loved what was going on here, but I’m, like, so excited that we’re going to do something new and that I get to bring on partners and still keep the same staff,” Sobocinski said earlier this week. Lucy Gellman Photo.
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A detail from Heidi Geist's Lost City . Lucy Gellman Photos.
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John Martin: "Transportation is a fight that I'm proud to be a part of." Lucy Gellman Photos.
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“We are all soldiers trying to get our brands out there,” Armada Brewing Co.'s John Kraszewski said earlier this week. “It’s a building that’s housing soldiers. The beeracks. The beer soldiers.” Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Tiffany Jones: “To realize that I could experience other people’s cultures through their food … I love experiencing what other people feel to be nostalgic. Doing that through food is doing that in such a fun and gratifying way.” Tagan Engel Photo.
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Atticus Bookstore and Cafe's new baker Josh Kanter: baker by day, whole grain ninja by night? Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Two beef patties, oxtails, rice and peas and cabbage. That’s my standard order when I walk up to the counter at a Jamaican spot. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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In addition to a signature maple chocolate-chip and a now-beloved oatmeal raisin walnut, Cynthia Rae has grown her repertoire to include 84 flavors, including vegan and nonvegan options. The cookies are named after the popular "moon rocks" of the 1970s and 80s. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Alisa Bowens-Mercado and her husband, John D. Mercado. David Sepulveda for the New Haven Independent.
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Chef Nadine Nelson, founder and director of GlobalLocal Gourmet, at the event. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Lopez: ServSafe, Sofrito, more school. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
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The first "Stir The Pot" also included a discussion of Mikki Halpin’s “Practical Activism: If You Want To Do Something, Don’t Do Everything.” The essay is in Julia Turshen’s Feed The Resistance . Thomas Breen Photo.
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Laua Hurwitz, in Koffee?'s commercial kitchen on East Street. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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The pride flag at a vigil and rally for victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting. Lucy Gellman Photo.
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"One will never forget their first Sally’s tomato pie!" Bart Conners Szczarba Photos.
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Every year, I fall victim to the December cookie infatuation that sweeps through our country. It doesn't matter that Christmas is not my personal holiday. Any month-long celebration of a food group (Yes! I consider cookies to be a food group!) can't be ignored. Food for me is an expression of love. The beauty and diversity of cookies, and the sheer number that it is possible to bake, make them the perfect vehicle for spreading the love far and wide.
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Nelson at the James Beard House dinner earlier this fall. A one-woman army, she was tasked with appetizers and cocktails. Copyright Clay Williams for the New York Times, with permission from the photographer.
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City Librarian Martha Brogan out on the library's Ives Branch patio, which faces out toward Elm Street and gives an elevated view of the city. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Hair, demoing the spritz cookies. The evening included both spritz and chocolate chip cookies. Lucy Gellman photos.
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Baristas Xiaoxiao “Connie” Kang and Rose Zeng. The Wangs, who own the cafe, asked not to be photographed. Lucy Gellman Photos.
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Five pounds of all purpose flour. Three eggs. One teaspoon of baking soda and the juice of one quarter lemon, squeezed at the peak of freshness. Three sticks of butter. A basement kitchen safe from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents, with enough vegetable oil to feed a small army.
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If you're jonesing for a cup of coffee in the next time you're in Wooster Square, you may not have to go back downtown. Come November, you can pick it up on 516 Chapel St., where another signature brew was once handed out by the cupful.
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You're a party planner at Yale University, in search of a new caterer for your next event. You’d love for them to be a fresh face, reflective of the diverse city in which you live. So you go online to a google map, and search all of the city’s restaurants owned by people of color, until you’ve found just the right one.
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McComic: Coffee as a sign of things to come/Lucy Gellman Photos
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