Sandra's Next Generation: Southern Cuisine With a Whole Lotta Heart in New Haven

If not for her belief of setting “unrealistic goals,” Sandra Pittman’s namesake restaurant, Sandra’s Next Generation, may not have ever been born in the first place.

Now in over 34 years with no signs of slowing down as evidenced by our Thanksgiving week visit where we witnessed the crew rapidly filling catering orders and making so much cornbread stuffing and baking hundreds of homemade pies it would blow your mind.

Fried chicken + cornbread w/honey butter. The same fried chicken Sandra learned from her mom, marinated for two days, then dipped in egg and dredged in seasoned flour. When they create something new, Sandra learns it first, then passes it onto the chef and the crew.

And even with an already booming takeout business (the restaurant is mostly takeout, but there’s a patio when the weather is nicer), Pittman’s still finds time to put the SOUL in soul food by consistently giving back to the New Haven community and all its charitable causes.

Wait. Did I say 34 years? To tell the origin story of Sandra’s, we have to take it even further back to New Haven’s Edgewood neighborhood where Pittman, whose name back then was Harris, started cooking in the first place.

A pie box homage to her mother, Mary Harris, where Sandra’s cooking comes from

“Everything happened at apartment 32 in our complex that had like 60-something units,” Pittman shares. “Our (my mom, Mary Harris, and father Robert) unit was in the front. My parents had three girls and three boys, like the Brady Bunch. My mom always made sure we were fed and she did lunch after school every single day. We didn’t believe in going out for fast food, so she made southern comfort food all my life. I was always amazed how she would prepare a meal for eight people.”

But outside of the meals prepared for the Harris Family, they would also cook for friends and neighbors that lived in the complex. Fried chicken, mac and cheese, braised collards, candied yam, and then some.

Blackened salmon w/Caribbean rice. Don’t eat fish or meat? No problem. Sandra’s even offers “Miguel’s Veggie Plate” that is all about the sides, four of ‘em, in fact.

“Everyone in the complex loved her food and every day was like Thanksgiving at my house,” she recalls. “As I got older, I noticed that people came over for several reasons like unity and they saw a family together and wanted to be a part of that. All you saw around the complex was people trying to do something, like maybe apartment 27 was selling icies for 10 cents. I was born and raised around hustle.”

Not one to sit on the sidelines, Pittman learned to cook all of her mom’s recipes by watching, practicing, and being allowed to cook her family’s weekend meals.

Teamwork makes the dream work. Miguel does the behind the scenes stuff like the numbers, inventory. He jokes that, “she does the hiring and I do the firing!” In all seriousness, Miguel’s favorite part of being in the industry is interacting with the employees. “We employ roughly 23 people,” he says. “Each has a different personality and we stress that they have to make a commitment to the community. And what’s important is giving people second chances. Some of the staff needed it and we are sensitive to that.”

“At 13 years old, I started selling dinners for $5,” she says. “I was inspired by her (my mom) and wanted to be just like her, a great mom, a great grandmother, and a great cook. She never used any measurements. I’m a visual learner, so I saw it and I mimicked it. I make the fried chicken just like she did and I sold dinners out of the apartment, on the back porch for years!”

Sandra’s Next Generation wouldn’t become a brick-and-mortar, though, until she met her now husband, Miguel, who used the magic pickup line on her, “Hey, baby! What’s your name?”

Soul rolls and soul empanadas are some “new school” grub. Some are stuffed with chopped pork (or BBQ chicken, sometimes fish), mac & cheese, and yams. Don’t leave Sandra’s without these guilty pleasures on a menu full of guilty pleasures.

More of what you can expect at Sandra’s Next Generation are platters like this one - chopped BBQ (pork), mac & cheese, and candied yams. Sandra says the menu is based on comforts from Alabama and the Carolinas. This chopped pork, however, is a tribute to Miguel’s uncle.

“Some people call it pulled pork, but we call it chopped BBQ,” Miguel says. “My uncle had a smoke shack in Enfield, North Carolina on Route 301. He was well known for it and passed it down to us with a vinegar sauce that’s got some crushed red pepper and sugar in there. We used to do it on a pit, the whole pig, I cooked over 400 pigs in my life, but we had to stop doing it that way because of complaints, so now it’s slow cooked in the oven and we constantly baste it.”

“I remember I had these chic jeans on and I heard someone say that,” she says. “I had heard about him already. I gave him my name and number and he called the next day. Our stories are so different. He was raised by a single mom. It was weird for me because I had family structure and he came from a broken home. He was hustling the streets. I was hustling selling dinners.”

According to Sandra, who credits Miguel with being the more business and numbers minded of the two of them, it was his idea to open a physical restaurant at 560 Congress Avenue all those decades ago in 1989.

“People told us not to because of all the shootings, killings, and drugs,” she says. “We dared to make it happen and to dream big.”

Strawberry Crunch Cake is a nod to Good Humor’s Strawberry Shortcake ice cream bar, crunchies included.

A southern staple - coconut pineapple cake

After a bunch of years on Congress, Sandra’s Next Generation did move to Downtown New Haven just after 2000 where the Pittman’s said they met so many new people of all cultures and from all over the country who came by to get a taste of their brand of stick-to-your-ribs soul food that remained an extension of Sandra’s mom’s kitchen, plus some new additions like southern style cakes, refined blackened Cajun fish dishes, and Miguel’s contribution in the form of Carolina chopped BBQ that he learned from his uncle.

They’d eventually move back to Congress Avenue, not far from where their original location was, no doubt bringing most, if not all of their Downtown customers with them.

“People right now come from all over, from Jersey, some from Georgia and other southern states,” Sandra says. “We always talk to people and ask where they come from. We wanted to be back over here to do things in the community and to be more impactful.”

Some of Sandra’s community service involves the team giving out toys to children and participating in a Halloween trunk-or-treat. And yeah, that includes serving soul satisfying meals as well, like on Thanksgiving Day for the homeless, on non-holidays for domestic violence victims, or to whomever needs it whenever they need it all over New Haven.

“I plant seeds,” Sandra says. “You have to help to get back. I like to set unrealistic goals and the universe will handle it.”

636 Congress Avenue, New Haven
203.787.4123, sandrasnextgeneration.com