by | May 14, 2020 5:19 pm | Comments (9)
Thomas Breen photo
Jordan’s Hot Dogs & Mac’s Corey Spruill Thursday, ready for business.
Outside J.P. Dempsey’s on State Street.
City officials and state business leaders are hustling to get the word out about the upcoming phased statewide “reopening” — which comes with a host of recommendations, rules, detailed planning, and apprehension around how this economic experiment can be done safely during a pandemic.
by | May 11, 2020 9:43 am | Comments (6)
Emily Hays Photo
Havenly Treats’ Passoni and Nieda outside Sweet Mary’s, where they plan to start serving free food this week.
When Caterina Passoni and Nieda Abbas heard that downtown bakery Sweet Mary’s was temporarily suspending business during the Covid-19 pandemic, they saw an opportunity to support two bakeries at once.
by | May 2, 2020 8:58 pm | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photo
“I had my doubts that we would ever get any help out here,” said Margareth, a senior resident of the Rockview housing development who walked from her apartment to a pop-up food distribution site at Katherine Brennan School on Saturday morning.
by | May 1, 2020 3:05 pm | Comments (4)
Maya McFadden Photo
Steady stream of customers at Sandra’s Next Generation.
Miguel and Sandra Pittman have figured out how to keep their popular soul food restaurant hopping during the pandemic — and picked up some ideas for how others, too, can adapt when the state gradually reopens.
by | Apr 30, 2020 10:16 am | Comments (0)
Sam Gurwitt Photo
Fire Chief Gary Merwede.
As Covid-19 cases inch over their peak in the Connecticut, Hamden logged 589 cases, and counting, on Wednesday.
by | Apr 29, 2020 9:56 am | Comments (3)
Hospital workers line up for fresh Puerto Rican food.
Efrain Nieves parked a food truck by the Yale New Haven Hospital Monday evening and prepared to dispense Spanish rice, chicken, roast pork, chicken soup and a hearty stew, sancocho for hungry hospital workers.
by | Apr 28, 2020 10:17 am | Comments (2)
Contributed Photo
Luke Austin and 5-year-old daughter Yvonne Michelle, about to make pancakes.
Luke Austin was having trouble with his 5‑year-old daughter’s online lessons. He could log into the online classroom but then got stuck; in 40 years as a cook, he has not needed to use computers.
A SWAT team from the public schools swung into action.
by | Apr 23, 2020 4:44 pm | Comments (2)
Amid the horrors wrought by Covid-19, some of the news offers hope — for a longer-term revival of democracy.
by | Apr 23, 2020 12:07 pm | Comments (0)
Sam Gurwitt photos
Chiekh Idrissou helping out mom at Motherland.
Watching his mother operate a grocery store in a pandemic, budding entreprenuer Chiekh Idrissou has learned that the best businesses fit the term “essential.”
by | Apr 22, 2020 6:26 pm | Comments (1)
Contributed photo
Food ready to be distributed at Common Ground.
City Food Systems Policy Director Latha Swamy (right) with a map of food pick-up sites.
The city has partnered with one local church to deliver over 1,500 bags of food to hungry seniors.
It has partnered with another to deliver more than 1,100 prepared meals to the elderly who can no longer visit the city’s shuttered senior centers.
And it has now launched a new webpage, interactive map, and comprehensive food resource list for New Haveners to turn to if they’re struggling to put dinner on the table during the Covid-19 public health and economic crises.
by | Apr 22, 2020 4:03 pm | Comments (1)
Sam Gurwitt Photo
As charities across the state struggle to keep up with ballooning demand for food, Hamden got one truck closer to keeping enough cans and boxes on the shelves of its pantry Wednesday.
by | Apr 17, 2020 6:12 pm | Comments (24)
Emily Hays Photo
Pho Ketkeo server Maylene Malichanh looks out to where she would normally park her car.
A bat-wielding vandal has the owner of a Southeast Asian restaurant downtown wondering whether to close up shop during the Covid-19 panic.
by | Apr 17, 2020 11:50 am | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden photo
Picking up groceries at the DESK food pantry downtown.
A comprehensive digital guide to food pantries and soup kitchens. A drive-through farmers market with no cap on doubled food stamp dollars. Mutual aid collaborations designed to get food to immigrants in need.
Those are among the grassroots efforts in town to make sure New Haveners don’t starve during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading ‘Frontline Providers Hustle To Keep City Fed’
by | Apr 16, 2020 9:50 am | Comments (5)
Maya McFadden photo
Free meal distribution outside Jepson School Wednesday.
As the city public school system transitions to a three-day-a-week free meal distribution schedule to reduce potential exposure to the novel coronavirus, school workers and hungry family members warned against limiting the schedule to such an extent that it becomes inconvenient for the people who need the food.
And a Board of Education member and top city school administrators contemplated bumping down the schedule even further to make sure that those involved don’t get sick.
by | Apr 15, 2020 12:26 pm | Comments (2)
Police officers have arrested a 42-year-old New Haven man for allegedly breaking into a closed Crown Street restaurant and consuming thousands of dollars worth of food and drink over the past four days.
by | Apr 15, 2020 10:19 am | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden Photo
Susan Bysiewicz, Rosa DeLauro, Bryan Hurlburt, Daniel Giacomi.
The state’s average number of food stamp applications has quadrupled during the Covid-19 crisis, from roughly 150 applications a day before the pandemic to 600 a day this week.
by | Apr 14, 2020 1:22 pm | Comments (4)
Paul Bass Photo
Organizer Luis Luna at the Food Garage: Undocumented workers are frontline workers.
Contributed Photo
Common Ground High School barn, where Food Garage team divides up boxes.
What began in mid-March with a few boxes of extra vegetables from Trader Joe’s has turned into a grassroots operation that collects donated food for around 180 mostly immigrant families a week out of a garage in Westville.
Continue reading ‘“Food Garage” Feeds Families During Covid’
by | Apr 13, 2020 3:12 pm | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden Photo
Line of customers outside Ferraro’s last week.
One of the main east side outposts for groceries amid the Covid-19 pandemic will close its doors to in-store shopping until Saturday white it undergoes a deep clean.
Continue reading ‘Ferraro’s Switches To Delivery, Curbside For 5 Days’
by | Apr 12, 2020 4:19 pm | Comments (7)
Maya McFadden photo
Nurse Melina Moore (in hairnet) accepts delivery Sunday from Koffee?
A city chapter of Frontline Foods, a national initiative to feed healthcare workers and support food businesses during Covid-19, hustled to put together meals for 350 Yale New Haven Hospital health care workers on Easter Sunday.
by | Apr 9, 2020 9:20 am | Comments (1)
Sam Gurwitt Photos
Volunteers and National Guardsmen at Wednesday’s food bank operation.
After weeks of planning and assembling, a small army of volunteers — including some who are literally in the army — needed only 60 minutes to place a tractor trailer’s worth of food in the trunks of 357 cars at Hamden Middle School.
by | Apr 3, 2020 12:07 pm | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photo
As Linda Gutierrez soaked her hand in sanitizer and collected groceries Wednesday at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) food pantry, she reflected on how she received sustenance beyond just food.
Continue reading ‘Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen Adapts, Meets Rising Demand’
by | Mar 31, 2020 12:02 pm | Comments (1)
Contributed Photo
Lunch this week on the patio at the Amistad Catholic Worker House, where inside dining is limited to eight people at a time while others get grab-to-go meals.
Mark Colville, who with Luz Catarineau operates the Amistad Catholic Worker House on Rosette Street, sent the following open letter to Mayor Justin Elicker.
Continue reading ‘Opinion: Non-Infected Homeless Need More Beds, Too’
by | Mar 26, 2020 7:37 pm | Comments (7)
Frank and Angela Bernardo decided that as the city’s ambulance workers and ER nurses put their lives on the line to treat Covid-19 pandemic patients, they would help keep them fueled in the classic New Haven style.
by | Mar 25, 2020 10:50 am | Comments (6)
Brian Slattery File Photo
Moon Rocks owner Marni Esposito (at right): Doubts shop will survive.
With chairs stacked on tables after Gov. Ned Lamont ordered all dine-in restaurant service closed on March 16, most Hamden restaurateurs have managed to stay afloat for now with deliveries and takeout. But they’re scraping the bottom of the pan, they said, and some may soon be baking their last batches and flipping their last pies.
by | Mar 24, 2020 10:32 am | Comments (2)
Bethany Watkins.
Maya McFadden Photo
Immanuel Baptist crew prepares meals to go.
“People’s need for a meal isn’t going to change just because of this crisis,” Immanuel Missionary Baptist Church soup kitchen head Bethany Watkins said as volunteers helped her to put on a version of the church’s weekly soup kitchen modified to keep people safe, and fed, amid the spread of Covid-19.