5 Honored For “Good Food” Prowess

by Jordan Allyn

Tortilla maker extraordinaire and Good Food Awardee Elizabeth Gonzalez. Credit: Chris Randall photo

Elizabeth Gonzalez meticulously molds her tortillas. Her process starts with nixtamalization—soaking and cooking the corn in an alkaline solution, washing, rinsing, and repeating. Then she grinds, mixes the corn into a dough, and presses the dough with a tortilladora. This labor, which takes around four hours, is often concealed behind her kitchen walls. 

On Thursday, however, the tortillas leapt from the limewater to the limelight as 150 people celebrated Gonzalez and her partner Anabel Hernández for their work at Tortilleria Semilla Co-Op. 

On the second floor of Union League Cafe on Chapel Street, CitySeed staff presented “Good Food Awards” to leaders of five local organizations, including to Gonzalez and Hernández. The voting committee, according to CitySeed Executive Director Sarah Miller, sifted through 100 nominations to select people who strengthen the local food system through various forms of leadership. 

“A lot of people in food don’t ever get recognized,” said Miller, who is also the alder for Fair Haven’s Ward 14. “And so we thought it would be a good thing to do to elevate people who are often unappreciated.” 

“It’s been a rough year to run a nonprofit,” Miller added. In March, CitySeed lost a $1 million Congressionally Directed Spending grant. They had planned to use the money to support their new building and commercial kitchen in Fair Haven. The nonprofit contributes to New Haven’s food scene by running farmers markets, training culinary professionals, and incubating new businesses. Part of the proceeds from the Good Food Awards will go towards subsidizing the buildout of the nonprofit’s new home on James Street. The rest of the proceeds will support the Sanctuary Kitchen culinary training program and doubling public benefits at the farmers markets.  

For Miller, Thursday’s event was “an opportunity to really look at the whole system as one and try to think about how we, these different people who all wear different hats and do different things during the day, collaborate to really make food available to all of us.” 

Ten years ago, Meg Fama—another awardee—parked her food truck at a CitySeed farmers market. Fellow farmer and award winner Steve Munno met Fama through the farmers market circuit. “Getting a breakfast sandwich from Meg was the key thing to making the market happen,” said Munno, the executive director of Massaro Community Farm. 

Before the award ceremony, Fama spent the day prepping squashs (acorn, butternut, and delicata) for her Fair Haven cafe, The Farm Belly. Munno spent the afternoon harvesting cabbage, driving the tractor, and sending emails. “When you’re doing the kind of work we do, in farming and in food, a lot of it is focused on your day-to-day operation,” said Munno. “And it can be hard to step away for a moment and appreciate the work that you do and the community that you do it with and amongst.” 

Nate Bradshaw, the head of Wilbur Cross High School Culinary Program, and Gideon Gebreyesus, ConnCORP’s Senior Vice President of Hospitality, also won Good Food Awards on Thursday. 

“I think that having an award like this serves to remind us and connect us to the leaders in our community who are sometimes hidden,” said Jacqueline Munno, programs manager for International & Professional Experience at the Yale Farm.

She added, “You have this amazing taco, but who made the tortilla?” 

Scenes from Thursday’s ceremony. Credit: Chris Randall photos