Thomas Breen photos
Eduardo De Lara shows his empanadas at Tuesday night’s pitch event.
Business Accelerator crews serve up the goods at The State House.
Loosen your belt and get ready to eat.
A cornucopia of fried, spicy, savory, and eminently portable international street food is about to hit New Haven, courtesy of a host of new food startups run by local immigrants with fare ranging from Dominican Republic-style spinach-and-feta empanadas, chutney from Mauritius, and social justice-flavored Salvadoran pupusas.
Those aspiring immigrant food entrepreneurs and their culinary concoctions were at the center of Tuesday night’s Food Business Accelerator pitch day at The State House at 310 State St.
The two-hour event featured 14 local food business startups that have recently completed a 10-week business training course run by the local entrepreneurship incubator Collab and the local farmers market operator CitySeed.
Food Business Accelerator pitch day at The State House.
As at Collab’s most recent pitch day for its inedible startups, dozens of New Haveners packed the Downtown performance venue to cheer, support, and learn more about a slate of new local small businesses, most of which were founded by local women, immigrants, and people of color.
Unlike at Collab’s pitch day, attendees got to taste the goods produced by the aspiring business owners, who lined the side walls of the venue with bountiful, colorful trays of Syrian hummus, Filipino pancit, vegan fried “chicken,” and handmade tortellini.
Republic Of Empanadas
De Lara on stage.
Eduardo De Lara, the founder and owner of Republic of Empanadas, was one such participant to pitch the crowd on a street food he hopes to lay claim to in this already teeming culinary capital of Connecticut.
De Lara, a 30-year-old coffee roaster at the Chapel Street cafe Jojo’s, was born and raised in Santiago de los Caballeros, the second largest city in the Dominican Republic.
And in the D.R., he said on Tuesday night, one cannot turn a corner without finding an empanada.
There are plenty of empanadas in the Elm City, he admitted, but the fried, stuffed Latin American pastries in town are almost exclusively filled with chicken, beef, or cheese, and are often relegated to the appetizer section of the menu.
Empanadas on the go.
De Lara seels to change all of that with a business that will show off the flavorful diversity his native handheld treats are capable of.
“My intention is to bring the versatility of empanadas to New Haven,” he said.
He had brought two such examples with him on Tuesday night: His Greek-inspired, spinach-and-feta-cheese empanadas, and his heartier, creamier chicken-and-bechamel empanadas.
But those aren’t the only flavors he has planned.
Sweet-spicy pulled port. Pumpkin spice. Lobster roll. Turkey and gravy. Apple pie.
Eduardo’s spinach-and-feta empanadas.
“We will experiment with empanadas,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
De Lara said he plans on selling his empanadas at CitySeed farmers market starting this spring. Eventually, he would like to open his own brick-and-mortar shop in town.
Contact Eduardo at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and watch his pitch in the Facebook Live video below.
Parvine’s Place
Parvine Toorawa.
Parvine Toorawa also plans on bringing street food from her native country to the taste buds of New Haven neighbors. The food she makes, however, is a little less fried. And the island country she hails from is a few thousand miles away from the D.R.
Toorawa is from Mauritius, a small island nation in the Indian Ocean a few hundred miles away from Madagascar.
In her native cuisine, which sits at the intersection of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures, any meal is nigh inconceivable without an accompanying chutney, which is an all-purpose condiment made with fruits or vegetables that can be sweet, tangy, spicy, or all three at the same time.
“Mauritius is very far away,” she said, “but I can bring it much closer to Connecticut with my delicious chutneys.”
Parvine’s vegetable relish.
Toorawa moved to the United States two decades ago with her husband, who is now an Arabic Literature professor at Yale. She said that she has a refrigerator in her Hamden home that is dedicated entirely to condiments, relishes, and chutneys.
On Tuesday night, she brought with her dozens of small plastic cups with samples of her date and jalapeno chutneys. She also had jars of her vegetable relish, made with cabbage, carrots, and green beans.
She said that in Mauritius, one of the more popular ways to eat chutneys is on a plain, crispy roll purchased from a street vendor, who cuts the roll in half and stuffs it with chutney.
Parvine’s many chutneys.
“Imagine eating chips without salsa,” she said, “or hot dogs without ketchup. In Mauritius, this is how we feel about chutneys.”
In the U.S., she said, the spreads go well with everything from cheese platters to open-face sandwiches to steaks to chips and vegetables.
She plans to broaden out her chutney offerings from date and jalapeno to mango, coconut, cranberry, and apricot. First she plans to sell her chutneys at CitySeed farmers markets starting this spring, and then eventually sell her condiments through local stores and online.
Contact Parvine at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and watch her pitch in the Facebook Live video below.
Pupuseria Co-op
Vanesa Suarez and Ana Benitez.
The founders of the Pupuseria Co-op also have their eyes set on sharing street food from their native countries with New Haveners eager for a tasty, fried, hand-held lunch.
They have something more on their minds than just culinary satisfaction and cultural diversity. Their startup strives for economic justice for immigrants, women, and other populations most vulnerable to low pay, poor treatment, and workplace exploitation.
Founded and owned by six women and one man who work for and volunteer with the local immigrant rights organization Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), the Pupuseria Co-op plans to make and sell traditional El Salvadoran corn tortillas stuffed with chicken, pork, beans, cheese, or loroco.
The business will also be worker-owned, sharing all profits and managerial responsibilities between its various Central and South American immigrant owners.
“We work our asses off working for other people,” said Vanesa Suarez, a 22-year-old ULA organizer, Peruvian immigrant, and part-time pizza chef who is also one of the co-founders of the pupseria.
With the pupuseria co-op, she said, there will be no middle men. There will be no wage theft. There will be no exploitation of workers forced to craft their lives around bosses more interested in profits than in good food and worker welfare. For the employees will own the business, she said, and all responsibilities will be even distributed.
Ana Benitez, a recent El Salvadoran immigrant who is also an ULA member and a co-op founder, has provided the pupusa recipe that will form the foundation of the new food business.
“I want to work in a community,” Benitez said when asked about the co-op set up.
“We want to stop exploitation in our communities,” said Suarez. “This is one way we can do it.”
Reach out to Suarez at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
And click here to learn more about all of the other participants in this first cohort of the Food Business Accelerator program.