Refugees Reopen Shuttered Bakery

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.

Passoni and Abbas are the executive director and head chef respectively of Havenly Treats, a refugee-focused bakery and employment program.

They have been looking for a kitchen downtown, which would be easier for their students to get to by bus, and a storefront to give them business management experience.

Passoni and Abbas are not trying to sell their baked goods at a time when their usual sales have plummeted. They have decided to donate meals instead. And they are renting the Sweet Mary’s kitchen at 129 Court St. to do it.

“As of two weeks ago, we thought we would all have to be on unemployment in May. Now, we have our own store, and we can also help people. We are beyond grateful,” Passoni said.

The donations, which are scheduled to start Tuesday, are possible because Havenly Treats raised over $50,000 last week through the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven’s Great Give.

Passoni and Abbas first met when the refugee resettlement agency IRIS assigned Passoni to be the cultural companion of then-new arrival Abbas. Despite extensive experience in cooking and business management, Abbas could not find a job in the U.S.

The two companions and a few other co-founders concocted the idea of a six-month cooking fellowship that would teach refugee women English, computer skills and employment rights at the same time.

Havenly pays fellows a living wage, so refugees do not have to make their usual choice of earning an income over setting up a career, Passoni said.

Two women have graduated from the first phase of the program and three are current fellows. Abbas works as head chef. Four of the six are the only income-earners in their households, including Abbas. The husbands of two of the women work part-time.

Havenly has been bouncing around New Haven for the past two years, sharing kitchens with Whole German Breads, Katalina’s Bakery and the Jewish Community Center in Woodbridge.

“We have been looking for a storefront for six months,” Passoni said.

The arrangement with Sweet Mary’s is just until June 15. What happens after that depends on Covid-19 and how long public safety measures last.

Joy During Hardship

The idea to donate food came to Havenly during one of their Zoom classes, an effort to keep the fellowship program going during the pandemic.

The group decided to donate cooked meals in partnership with Haven’s Harvest and other community organizations. The intended recipients would be immigrants, including the undocumented and refugees.

“Allah gave us this kitchen so that we can give back and we can make meals for the poor,” Abbas said, with Passoni translating.

“It’s a strange first step in launching a store, but I know that people will love the food and it will keep us chefs going. We need energy during this pandemic too.”

Abbas has run her own grassroots food relief program before, as a young woman in Baghdad.

When war started in Iraq in the 1990s, she saw her community going hungry.

“There was no flour, no rice. The prices increased a lot as well,” she said.

Abbas ran three stores in Iraq with her husband, Tareq Al-Mashhadani. One was a juice and dessert store. Another was a bakery, and a third was a snack shop with sandwiches and rice bowls. Abbas talked with her husband about whether they had enough to share with others.

“In the Quran, it says that if you give someone $1, you will get $10 back,” Abbas said.

Abbas began cooking and distributing 50 to 60 meals a day. These were huge portions, much bigger than the way Americans eat, she added.

Abbas cooked on a small gas-powered stove, using branches to make a fire. There was no electricity, she said.

“It was really hard to cook like that. The gases would irritate your eyes. Your whole body would smell like oil from a fire,” Abbas said.

“But even with these conditions, when we were cooking, the crisis felt like it was going away. We would laugh. We would have a different energy. Thanks to this program, even my life felt a bit easier.”

Abbas’ informal food relief program ended in 2005, when bombs hit her stores and home. Abbas and Al-Mashhadani sold everything they had left and fled to Syria.

“We had a very, very small amount of money with us, because we had lost everything in the world. Slowly, slowly we restarted,” Abbas said.

Abbas lived in Syria for eight years. She and her husband ran a deli that was so profitable they were able to open a laundromat with their savings. In 2010, they saw the signs of a civil war brewing in Syria and pulled up roots again.

They spent four years in Turkey as refugees. Finally, they won asylum in the U.S. in 2014.

Abbas said that she saw a social safety net in the U.S, like food stamps, that she had not seen elsewhere. That same net doesn’t exist for undocumented immigrants, which is part of the impetus for the food relief program now, Passoni added.

Havenly has just gotten approval from the city and hopes to open up shop on Court Street on Tuesday, Passoni said. They plan to relaunch sales after devoting a month or so to the food relief program.

The team is keeping up with ServSafe guidelines for preventing the spread of Covid-19 in the restaurant industry. They plan to wear gloves and masks and set up a contactless pick-up system in the front of the store.

The menu will change daily, Abbas said.

The first day, Havenly would send out an Iraqi rice dish with peas and meat, with a cucumber and yogurt salad on the side.

The next day would be a lentil and rice dish with salad. For the third day, the Havenly cooks would send out hummus and flatbread with cheese, za’atar and meat.

“I know the meaning of getting food relief. If you get the same food every day, you start feeling extremely bored. Families won’t feel like they’re cared for,” Abbas said. ​“We’ll also vary the way it looks so even the presentation brings new joy.”

Havenly plans to tuck notes in English, Arabic, Spanish and Pashto into the food parcels.

The first note introduces Abbas as ​“Chef Nieda.”

“I’m writing from the Havenly kitchen,” Abbas read. ​“I’m really happy to be helping during this time of corona. We will lift your spirits and you will lift ours in return.”