Hundreds Attend Black Foodie Expo

Syreeta Murphy’s mac and cheese — extra cheesy, baked from scratch, and made with love — has been a staple at cookouts for years.

On Thursday night, she brought her signature dish to the Cambria Hotel for the city’s first Black Foodie Expo. 

Organizers Yusuf Hasaan and Jasmine Sampson commandeered a swanky hotel conference room, turning it into a vibrant party space packed with 20 Black-owned food businesses, 300 attendees, a handful of ​“food-fluencers,” and two DJs (DJ E‑One and DJ Handles). 

Cuisines ranged from West African to Caribbean to soul food, and vendors offered both free samples and items for sale.

Amid the laughter and chatter filling the room at the 20 Dwight St. hotel, Murphy said that she had never planned to run a catering business. Then one night, God told her to ​“start the business,” and she bought the domain for Bougie Bite Catering in East Haven the very next morning. 

Mac and cheese remains her best-seller, with shrimp pesto pasta not far behind.

Attendees raved about Murphy’s mac and cheese, as well as salmon nuggets from Chef G. Paris, pounded yams from Kosy’s African Kitchen, and rice and bean arancini from Kamal Rose’s The Rose Experience.

Just outside of the conference room, Dee Marshall, who was ​“completely stuffed,” shared her reflections on the event. She described how special it was to see so many people enjoying African American cuisines. ​“They gave us nothing, but we made gold out of scraps,” she said.

Jordan Dease shared her excitement over having an event that gives exposure to Black-owned businesses. He thought that the vegan beet burger from Khemi’s Vegan Cuisine looked so delicious that he purchased one without trying a sample first. 

Deja Smith, the owner of Khemi’s, was delighted to find that ​“people [were] open to trying vegan food, even if they [were] not vegan.”

When they first came up with the idea for the Black Foodie Expo, long-time friends Sampson and Hasaan wanted to ​“use food to bring people together.”

Hasaan, with a background in marketing, suggested inviting famous food influencers, including Daymon Patterson and Jimmy Robinson, to judge a competition among the vendors for the expo’s best food sample. (The winner for best entrée was Auntie Sheelah’s Cheesecakes, and Veegmyeats won best baked good).

Sampson said she considered Thursday’s event a resounding success, particularly for showing New Haven that many Black-owned businesses ​“take pride in their food.”

The attendees loved the event so much that they requested a quarterly cadence, but Sampson and Hasaan are leaning towards making it annual. They have another event planned in November, the details of which Hasaan kept under wraps, saying only that it would be ​“unique and completely different from [the Black Foodie Expo] experience.”

In the dessert section, Mirelis Baredes, the owner of Pura Vida Luxury Treats, had cookies and chocolate tarts flying off the table. After teaching for 17 years, she left the classroom three years ago to start her business. ​“I love to cook and needed more time at home,” she said, ​“so I decided to start Pura Vida.”

Kassandra Menelas, sampling an all-natural mango slushie from Pura Vida, shared that it was ​“beautiful to see all of these restaurants and chefs come together.”

Taylor Whaley, daughter of Auntie Sheelah’s founder Sheelah Cain, said that the event had ​“a good vibe.” She handed out samples of her mother’s cheesecakes, which used a recipe that took over a year to perfect.

For this reporter, that year was well worth it. The cheesecake was creamy and tangy, a perfect end to a night filled with bold flavors, lively music, and a community brought together by a shared love of food.