Mama Nana's Soul Catering | Classic American Restaurant in San Jose, CA
Welcome to Nana's Soul Catering
Welcome to our soul food catering business, where we serve up a mouthwatering array of flavorful dishes that will warm your heart and satisfy your cravings. From our tender fried chicken to our savory collard greens, each bite is filled with love and tradition. Let us bring the soulful taste of our kitchen to your next event.
View Our MenusMamanana Soul is a very personal project for me. It grew out of history and family stories passed down with cultures intersecting and diverging over decades. It also grew out of a feeling of despair as I watched my children marching and protesting for the simple recognition of humanity.
In 2020, my second oldest daughter was readying my youngest children to join her in a BLM march in Milpitas. She was determined, bold and very justified in her efforts. Pepper spray education and a quick discussion of bias and injustice ensued. My heart broke. Why were my children marching? Why were we still marching…here in San Jose…here in the belly of integration and diversity? My mind wandered to the sit ins of my parents. My mind wandered to the era of MLK. Why were we still marching? I remembered desegregation efforts in my high school years and the friends I grew up with. Were they the ones doubting my humanity?
Silicon Valley does not exist without a convergence of culture. We grew up with wide eyed, hippy teachers and school international days at every age. As children, we ate in each other's homes and shared each other’s traditions from all over the world. So why were we still marching? Were their kids marching too?
My history lessons came back and I searched my mind. Rosa Parks, the Tuskegee Airmen, the little Rock Nine all flashed before me. Reconstruction, Frederick Douglas and before him, Harriet Tubman also have to be recognized. And yet with all of this history, my children were still marching and I was left flabbergasted. The first African slave arrived in the USA in 1619. 2020 marked 401 years of crimes, discrimination and protests. 401 years of history spanning 13 or so generations that are each hoping for common decency and recognition as humans. We are still marching. We are still justifying our existence.
Residing in that 13th generation, I had to choose the response that would satisfy my dismay, my pride and my longing to move this generation forward. I do not want to see my grandsons marching to convince the world that they are people. So my family will meet people where most conversations happen…at the kitchen table. My response is to cook and nourish with the hopes that we can one day very soon stop convincing others that we, too, bleed red and feel blue.
Every dish in MamaNana Soul celebrates the foundation of the US, the diversity of colonialists and the struggles of slaves. Each dish celebrates and educates. This is where I hope all of us come together and start seeing the legacy of slaves in the US as one of compassion, innovation and keen survival. Soul food is just that. It is food that feeds and supports the soul in all of us.