The Best Soul Food in NYC is on Staten Island

[ambient music]

[Shaw-nae] Shaw-nae's House is a soul food sanctuary.

I am historically the only restaurant on Staten Island

to ever receive two stars in the New York Times

and then put on the top 100 best restaurants

and it was done with six tables, 32 seats.

We sell out of food every single weekend.

Soul food is a passage.

It also is tied to what we are as African Americans.

We're preparing these dishes that are not new to us,

but we elevate them and make those things really beautiful.

[ambient music]

Hello, I am Shaw-nea,

and you are at Shaw-nae's House

right here in Stapleton, Staten Island.

I need you guys to get in here so we can get it together

'cause it's going to be a very busy night.

[gentle music]

This is my house.

It is a very intimate space, I will say.

We got a living room.

I started this whole project in my real house.

So when I got into the business

of actually owning a brick and mortar,

it was like, don't stress it.

Just open up exactly what you had at home.

So it is a packed and very busy night tonight.

I got a lot going on.

All right, let's go get the vibe.

Let's get cooking.

[upbeat music]

So this is my station.

It's a very small and tight station,

but just like at home, when you're at home

and you're in your kitchen with your family,

you find your spot and you kind of like get comfortable.

I work with my husband who is so wonderful

for doing so much fabulous stuff for me.

He preps a lot of what it is that I get done,

like cutting my collard greens.

He trims the fat on my oxtails.

This goes in right now.

I started doing oxtail probably about 10 years ago.

So what I decided to do was put a twist on a cultural dish.

I've seen people do recipes

where they've thrown ice chips into their oxtails

to create whatever they consider to be more moisture.

I think that if you do it frozen

and then you season it properly,

it's going to have the moisture

because it has the ice already embedded in the oxtail.

And then I put some bouillon in there

because that gives it a nice little seasoning.

It's going to make it even more just,

I don't know, what's the word you want?

Delectable, delicious, off the hook, crazy, out of control?

Like that's just what it is.

A little bit of brown sugar.

And then I have a secret blend

and it'll have hidden spices in there

that people keep trying to figure out and I never give them.

Soul food has adopted oxtail

and they do cook it in the south.

But this one is sort of like the twist on the Caribbean

and on the southern styled oxtail.

I also like to put, this is ashwagandha.

And so I stick these things in here.

Soursop leaves.

They do all those good things for you.

Just like your mom used to throw mushrooms

in your spaghetti, that's what that is for me.

Soul food for me is the experience.

I believe that when I'm cooking soul food,

I become the servant of unconditional love.

It's not necessarily all about the food,

it's about us making sure that we're serving people.

All food is not the food that's best for us

that makes us feel good

or reminds us of things that our families used to do

or go through or experience.

And I believe that soul food does that.

This is browning sauce.

It's burnt sugar

and it allows for the oxtail to have its color.

My grandmother was a dietician for over 40 years

and I know that my grandmother

taught me a lot of different recipes when I was growing up.

And it wasn't necessarily about the recipes

and the food, it was about the technique

and making sure that I could feed

a lot of people at one time.

'Cause she believed that if somebody walked in the door,

they needed to be able to be fed.

So this is a little bit of barbecue sauce.

So I saw that Caribbeans, right?

They were like putting ketchup in there and I'm like

so not a fan of ketchup.

Like get the ketchup away from me.

The barbecue sauce has to be last

since it has a little bit of sugar in it.

This is a little bit of starch and that's it.

Thickening it over time and it doesn't send you burden.

Putting this starch in here while it's cooking

and me not having to disturb it made the recipe better.

And I'm adding water into here right now

because this is going to create the gravy

and the broth for the oxtail.

Literally when I put this top on here

and I go put this in the oven, you can forget about it.

Stop talking to me about oxtail

because it's not coming out for four hours.

This says bye-bye.

I told you, don't ask me about this, right?

Like we can't ask about this

because when those doors open up,

the oxtail orders go crazy.

If you come here after eight o'clock,

just order something fried.

That's all I can tell you.

Oxtails are gone.

We go through probably roughly about 30 pounds a day

of oxtail.

So we wanna make sure that we get these oxtails in.

I'm gonna pretend to be super strong.

It's very heavy.

For now, four hours.

When I tell you it has to be taken out

at exactly four hours,

it has to come out at exactly four hours.

A minute over and those oxtails are like meat gravy

and you might just throw them on french fries.

[upbeat music]

So mac and cheese is definitely a soul food staple.

The elbows have already been cooked for 10 minutes

and then I start to combine my products in here

to make it fabulous.

I'm adding a little bit of milk here.

The macaroni and cheese I started doing when I had my kids

and had my family.

At family gatherings, they were asking me to do it

and I would try all these different cheeses.

Every time that I tried it,

I never liked it when it came out too sharp.

I liked it more on the milder side.

What I noticed with customers is they do too.

People don't want the cheese to punch them in the face.

They want the slight taste of like a cheddar,

but they want things to be very like smooth

and easy to take down.

You gotta do what you like.

So I got American, a mix of cheddar, mild cheddar,

and I add a little bit of Monterey.

I don't really think that macaroni and cheese

is so much about the cheese.

I think it's one the way that you take care of it

and it's how you season it.

I just think it should be just salt and pepper.

So my grandmother was like,

If you can't cook with salt and pepper

and it don't taste good, get out the kitchen.

And I'm like, Cool, I got you.

But we don't use no salt

with the cute little girl holding the umbrella

trying to trap us.

We mess around with pink salt.

And it's pink, it's cute, and I'm a girl.

And then we're gonna add the heavier black pepper.

I melt the cheese down just a little bit

so that I can put it into the pans

and layer it with more cheese

and then put it in the oven so that it bakes.

I do pretty much all the cooking and I manage to do it

because I've been doing it for a very long time.

My husband, we have learned how to work together

and figure these things out.

He fills in every single blank

and every single gap that I have going on in this kitchen

to make sure that things are running

as smoothly as possible.

Hey babe, honey, husband,

can you get the pans for me for the macaroni and cheese?

I love putting them on the spot.

This is the beauty of marriage.

Thanks, babe, you're the best.

And we're gonna just layer it, don't overdo it.

Putting the cheese on top

creates like a little blanket for it.

We're gonna slip these in the oven.

20 minutes to cook.

You wanna make sure that this melts down

and gets nice and crispy and golden

and then it's ready to go on your plate.

So it's about noon, it's time to get this fried chicken.

Let's go.

[upbeat music]

This is such a soulful staple right here.

I personally love fried chicken.

It's probably my vice.

I don't know, 'cause my dad is a fried chicken fanatic.

He loves fried chicken and we only eat the flats.

My family use flat brat only in every single recipe.

And every single person in my family has ever done

or worked on has been something that gets worked on

moving all the way up into our age generation.

And so I believe that I've improved

my grandmother's version of certain recipes.

One of my secret sort of things that I teach people

when they don't know how to fry chicken is to do this.

This is chicken broth, right?

So I just added a little bit of bullion.

So I have what my husband calls magic.

This is just a seasoning blend that I make here.

It's a secret.

I'll keep some things for myself.

So I like to season my chicken first

and you wanna kind of mix it in and get it all good.

I like to make the smaller batches.

You wanna make sure that you don't crowd it.

So now there's another layer of seasoning.

What I do is I dip them in here.

Or what you can do, if you don't really wanna mess with it

and you don't wanna be crazy about it,

you just pour some in there.

So we come over here to my flour,

my dredge has seasoning in it.

This is all purpose, AP, regular old grandma flour.

I like the flat 'cause it's just like,

it looks sexy, it's cute.

It's like, you know, it's like a little,

just a flat little piece of chicken

and just like just bite the meat off

and it's got two little bones in there.

It's like fabulous.

So I wanna make sure that I check my cooking oil.

So you see it fizzling right there.

That means that it's ready to go.

And I'm putting just about 10 wings on each side.

One of my cooking rules, chicken is very chatty

and it will talk to you

when it first goes into the cooking oil.

When chicken is done, it just shuts up.

The grease, the cooking oil is quiet.

By the time that happens, that chicken is so crispy

and golden and beautiful.

And it was like,

you know when a girl put a dress on and she go like this,

she knows she ready.

That's how that chicken be doing it.

It'd be known as ready. [laughs]

So we do a double fried technique

and we do fry the chicken ahead of time and then we store it

and then we bring it back out and we fry more.

I'm gonna need to take this macaroni and cheese out

because I cannot burn my macaroni and cheese.

I gotta get it.

So golden.

It's such a blessing.

So that's done.

Cover it and put it in a steamer

so that it stays hot into temperature.

You wanna make sure you protect your people,

protect your neck like Wu-Tang, protect your mac and cheese.

[oil sizzling]

It is looking like it's done.

All the chicken is floating and it's very quiet.

It's like calm.

It's like I'm ready to go.

So now we know to take it out.

For the people who are a part of the flat tribe right here,

ooh, that's a golden flat right there, baby,

you ain't messing with that.

So I need to fry some more of this chicken

because we gotta get these batches out

and then we're gonna get to this cornbread.

[upbeat music]

[oil sizzling]

[upbeat music]

This is the part that makes people so happy.

The cornbread I'm serving in here is elite.

So like which one you want?

Vanilla, sweet potatoes, strawberry, blueberry,

chocolate chip, Oreo, banana pudding.

You tell me which one you want.

And then they're looking at me like all crazy like,

Wait, hold on, did you just name multiple cornbread?

I'm like, Yeah.

For me, I don't really like mess with a whole lot of stuff.

Corn meal, sugar, flour, baking powder,

baking soda, salt.

This is the cornbread mix right here.

I do a sweet potato cornbread dessert.

Now this sweet potato cornbread dessert

is punch your mom in the face delicious.

Like when I tell you,

Can't nobody beat me doing this?

Can't nobody beat me doing this.

These are my cooked sweet potatoes right here.

But these are already, as some people would say, candied.

And then you cannot be scared

of how much you put of this in here.

What the sauce of the sweet potatoes does

is it softens it and makes it very, very moist.

So a lot of people may say,

Oh, I don't like cornbread 'cause it's very gritty.

This right here will not do that.

When I tell you it's fluffy, literally tastes like cake,

it tastes like cake.

I do have a sweet tooth.

I'm not even gonna lie to you.

I didn't decide to make sweet potato cornbread

like a dessert because I have a sweet tooth.

I made it like a dessert because I don't bake.

'Cause I don't really care

about the science of these things.

I'm gonna make some strawberry cornbread.

It's one of our top sellers.

The strawberry used to be my number one sale.

Sweet potato kind of dwarfed it and took over.

I love to be spontaneous

with everything that I'm doing in the kitchen

because that means that I am being present

and living in the moment

and I'm not letting these things kind of like control me.

Following a very, I won't say difficult time,

but a pivotal time in my life when I was in a coma,

when I woke up, it said,

Chase your legacy and not the luxury.

Opening up a restaurant

was something I discovered I needed to do,

but it was very little money

put into us opening up this restaurant

who after quitting my job,

being a teacher for 10 and a half years,

walking away from all of that,

I came into this food business.

We took a huge dip for the first two and a half years

and didn't really see any customers

and then people just started to notice us

and then they came from all five boroughs

and then it spread very quickly like wildflower

all over the world.

So I'm gonna slip my strawberry cornbread into the oven

and these are gonna go for as long as I let them go.

I kind of do like a whole look, see tests,

and it takes me roughly about 20 minutes

to bake these off right.

I don't really have to cook much else

because like I said, this is a slow process.

So soul food is all about patience.

You gotta take the time out to make sure

that things are doing what they do and not disturbing it.

Real life is break time.

I'm like a child, I need a nap.

And so honestly, my husband being here,

sweating to the oldies, chewing his fried chicken,

and I will be on my phone emailing and answering calls

and I will be doing everything else

that makes this whole empire great

because I am multitasking.

So I need a break.

I'm a diva.

That's just what I need.

It is break time, change my shoes,

say hi to my grandma.

This right here is one of the biggest reasons

why I'm doing all of this.

Like I wish my grandmother would've had the opportunity

to see all of what I've done.

I have a lot of like memorabilia, family pictures, books,

albums, things that talk about my history in here.

Staten Island is not known for soul food.

To have a Black-owned business on Staten Island

and then be able to amplify Black history, Black culture.

I tell people that my ancestors came here in 1799.

They purchased property in 1828

as the first African Americans to purchase land here.

We are a registered stop

on what used to be the Underground Railroad,

and we are the oldest community inhabited

by its original descendants in the United States.

Giving them that tidbit of history,

anybody that comes in here, they are stunned.

Their mouth is on the floor.

So I don't get a history check anymore

from the Department of Education and I totally need a break

'cause I'm super duper exhausted.

I definitely need to take it down a minute.

So you guys gotta give me a second.

Let me take my hair down.

[upbeat music]

So right now we're getting ready to have

our very brief staff meeting.

Kind of like keep the staff abreast

of what's on the menu for the day.

So today it's a lot of small groups.

Groups of twos, groups of threes,

and a group of four at night.

Let's communicate on 86 and things

'cause it's a lot of groups coming in at different times

and we wanna know when we sit them down,

we wanna let them know what we don't have.

Stay positive and keep a smile on your face.

[gentle music]

All right, so it's five o'clock,

the customers are getting ready to knock the door down.

I'm very happy that you guys came into my house,

but now it's time for you to get the hell out.

So [speaks in foreign language].

Goodnight.

Bye.

I love y'all. Love you.

I love y'all.