Today’s Special: Ma’s Favorite

When Cherisa Lloyd enjoys the ​“Margie Special” at her new Westville soul food restaurant, she’s reminded of the love, strength, strong family values, and passion for cooking of her late mother, and best friend. 

Lloyd, 46, is the owner of Ma’s House, newly opened at the former Lena’s Cafe spot at 873 Whalley Ave. 

The Southern breakfast and dinner restaurant has been a long time coming for Lloyd, a New Haven native and mom of five. 

The restaurant’s menu and atmosphere are inspired by Lloyd’s mother, Margie Streater Stroud, who passed away in 2017 at 75 years old.

The restaurant has begun serving breakfast from 9 to 11 a.m. Dinner hours runs from 4 until 9 p.m. every day except Tuesdays. 

The menu is composed of several of her mom’s recipes along with favorite desserts like candy apples and Rice Krispies treats. Featured dishes include chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits, and homemade corned beef hash. 

At the restaurant’s entrance, a sign reads, ​“Y’all come eat.” A guest book invites customers to offer suggestions to Lloyd. 

Along the dining room seating area is a wall-turned-photo album of Lloyd’s family history. The oldest of pictures date back to her great great-grandparents on her mother’s side of the family. 

On the other half of the same wall, Lloyd leaves space to soon begin a customer wall featuring photos of patrons. 

A living room area is set up at the back of the restaurant, organized to resemble Lloyd’s childhood home. The walls are designed with framed photos of Black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and hangings with messages like ​“There’s no place like home.” 

Set on a side table in the back area is the Bible once owned by Lloyd’s mother. Inside remain markings and sticky-note reminders from her mother and several pages of handwritten letters from Lloyd to her mother that she’d write while at church after her mom’s passing. 

Streater Stroud had a love for cooking. Her kids would often tell her to open a restaurant. 

Lloyd recalled her mom’s cooking being the glue for her family. 

“Whatever we was going through, ma’s food was our saving grace,” she said. 

Even when her siblings were not talking, Lloyd recalled her mom telling them: ​“You guys be at the house at 5 ​‘o clock.” 

“By 6 o’clock we were back talking, hugging, kissing, and that’s the way she brought the family together,” Lloyd said.

Streater Stroud was a mother to everybody she knew, Lloyd recalled. 

“We always met at ma’s house,” she said. ​“Ma’s house was the comfort zone. It was where we knew we were safe, safe from the streets, harm, everything.”

Restaurant chefs Michael Hicks and Joshua Brown put together a preview portion of the ​“Margie Special” for this reporter. The plate consists of a garlic butter sirloin steak, a butter and cheese-stuffed baked potato, and cabbage. 

This was a favorite for Streater Stroud and her go-to meal at every restaurant, Lloyd said. 

While in restaurants while requesting a well-done steak, Streater Stroud would point to her hand and say: ​“I want it to look like this.”

First Hicks placed the sirloin on a medium to high stovetop to cook on the first side for about three minutes. While cooking, he loaded the baked potato with dollops of butter and shredded cheddar cheese, then set it to cook in the oven. 

Brown, meanwhile, prepared a bowl of savory cabbage. Hicks flipped the steak and topped it with rosemary. 

After three to four minutes of cooking under an iron grill press, the steak was removed and left to rest while Hicks and Brown plated the potato and cabbage sides. 

Then the steak was cut into even strips and served. 

Streater Stroud moved to New Haven in the early 1970s. Lloyd was the first of her seven siblings to graduate from college. A month before Lloyd graduated with her associate’s degree in business management from Albertus Magnus College, Lloyd’s mother passed in 2017. 

Just before her passing, Lloyd and her mother were talking daily about arranging for her to come to the graduation ceremony. ​“We had decided that we were going to bring her wheelchair to the front to see me,” she said. 

On the day Streater Stroud passed, Lloyd was heading to her final business statistics test, which she aced.

Since then Lloyd has received her bachelor’s in social work and has a year left until she receives her master’s. 

Lloyd’s best friend was her mom. 

Growing up, Lloyd was always in the kitchen with her mom rather than joining her siblings, who played outside. 

“How do you know how much sugar to put in there?” she recalled asking her mom, who would never use measuring cups. 

Her mom’s response would usually be: ​“When you get older and you get used to it, you’ll know you don’t need measuring cups, baby.”

In the restaurant’s living room area is a TV that resembles the one she grew up with, a record player, and a coffee table depicting Streater Stroud with family and her favorite crossword puzzle books. 

Her mom loved to play records by Teddy Pendergrass. 

Due to a work injury, Streater Stroud was a stay-at-home mom for most of Lloyd’s life. Her passions were her kids and cooking.

Lloyd recalled her mother taking her to Barnum & Bailey shows, concerts, movies, amusement parks, and zoos. 

“There’s nothing I can think of that I didn’t do and didn’t have, because of her,” she said. 

For every school bake sale, her mom would prepare homemade brownies, cakes, candy apples.

Every day after school, Lloyd would get a blanket and sit on the floor in front of the TV doing her homework for hours while her mom would bring her snacks and meals. 

The two would occasionally make trips to the casino to play the slots, Streater Stroud’s favorite. 

Since she was 15 years old, Lloyd helped her mom with having primary custody of seven of her sister’s children. As a sophomore at Wilbur Cross, she took shifts throughout the night with her mother to care for her nieces and nephews. As she grew older and her mother was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, Lloyd became guardian to her sister’s children. 

In 2005, Lloyd sought a change of scenery. She moved briefly to Charlotte, N.C., before her mother’s health declined and she needed a primary caregiver. Then Lloyd returned to New Haven to take care of her mother. 

At the time Lloyd was raising three of her kids, seven nieces and nephews, and caring for her mother. While working, she arranged her break schedule around her mother’s medication schedule.

Lloyd now has one daughter and four boys, ages 27, 22, 19, 14, 10.

In 2012 Lloyd resigned her job at Yale after nine years to dedicate more time to learning about her youngest son’s diagnosis of autism. 

She began posting about her son, who is now nonverbal, on Facebook to learn from others. Despite some family pushback against Lloyd sharing publicly about her son’s disorder, she began to gain dozens of followers also looking to find a community of families living with autism. 

In 2014 Lloyd would post daily about her son Leandre’s daily tasks, including failures and accomplishments. 

She went on to found Leandre’s World, a foundation and autism advocacy platform. Over the years Lloyd has used her platform to host seminars and support groups for families

After the passing of her mom, Lloyd fell into a deep depression and paused hosting seminars. She would spend nearly entire days at the graveyard. 

The loss motivated her to return to church.

Two years ago Lloyd became a clinical practice manager for Milestones Behavioral Services. She was still she was only just getting by on her bills. 

She would occasionally sell plates of food to the community using her mom’s recipes. After making $1,400 in one day and several compliments of her food, Lloyd decided she would open a restaurant in memory of her mother.

With an investment from a friend and all of her savings, Lloyd secured a spot on State Street but the plan fell through. She then found the spot on Whalley Avenue with her remaining savings. 

On her opening night in July Lloyd recalled having only $500 left in her savings. 

Long term, Lloyd hopes to turn Ma’s House into a franchise and introduce ​“Margie’s Closet” to the restaurant to provide communities with free daily needs like soap, clothes, and scholarships.