Three Sistas in the Kitchen have a family recipe for success

Someone is singing in the kitchen. No, not just one person, but two, three, singing and laughing, the laughter sputtering like bacon grease on a frying pan.

The delicious smells from the kitchen whet the appetite coming in the front door of Sistas in the Kitchen at 2307 East Main, just where H Avenue forks off to the north, creating a triangular island where the little restaurant sits. Once it was a gas station. Once it was another restaurant, then another and another, until a car crashed through the south wall. The ruined building remained long vacant just waiting for song and laughter and the clatter of cookware such as resounds there today.

More than likely Granddad (Leroy Williams) will greet you at the door when you walk in. He’s almost always there, doing whatever needs to be done. He delivers the food for the soul food restaurant’s branch business of catering, he unlocks the door in the morning, he mops floors, he waits on tables, he fries up okra, he tightens loose screws.

"Call me a floater," Leroy Williams says. Granddad smiles, touching his fedora. "I do whatever is needed."

He does more than that. This is a family affair, this restaurant that opened in October 2013, and it’s come into being by a recipe of family, love, faith, and a great deal of public demand. The kitchen has been the gathering place for this family for as long as any of its members can remember, and that center has drawn in ever more friends and neighbors.

Although a great many family members work at Sistas in the Kitchen, it's mostly run by three sisters: Tameka Sims and Marquitta and Mya Williams. Waiting on tables is nephew DeAundray Shaw.

"You know, soul food comes from what was left over during slavery," says DeAundray Shaw. He points to a framed text that he takes off the wall for a moment that explains the 300-year history of soul food. "After they took the good parts, they gave us what was left over and we took what was negative and made it into something that is positive."

Tameka Sims smiles wide. "It’s comfort food. Soul food is good times’ food," she says.

The recipes for the menu, says Shaw, almost entirely come from what his grandmother cooked. "We called her Big Mama. I loved everything she cooked, even the vegetables. I only eat her vegetables."

A bowl of fried okra appears before Shaw as he talks about vegetables, and he chuckles. "I haven’t tasted those yet," he admits, then pops one of the fried okra nuggets into his mouth. His eyebrows go up. "Hey, this is good!"

Food is the bond of love that keeps this family together. The three sisters recall childhood years of gathering in the kitchen, learning to cook. They tell of the last meal  of pork chops and cornbread Big Mama cooked, at age 99. She lived just days shy of her 103rd birthday.

"We had the best Big Mama in the whole world," says Marquitta Williams. "She was a strong woman, ran a daycare, and the kids were always asking for her food. She had us in the kitchen so much we thought we were in trouble." Williams laughs heartily. "But we learned how to cook. Smothered pork chops, meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, candied yams … now we’re the sisters in the kitchen, but 80 percent of the credit goes to Mama, and Big Mama, and Daddy makes the best breakfasts."

As the sisters tell it, it all began with potlucks and church dinners and cooking for fundraisers. People liked their food so much, they kept asking for more. The sisters heard so many suggestions, if not outright demands, to open a restaurant that they finally began to listen. Church dinners grew into a catering service, and the catering service blossomed into a restaurant.

"We found a building on South Burdick to lease, used to be Juanita’s," says Leroy Williams, or Granddad.

"We worked hard fixing up the place," adds DeAundray Shaw. "All the inside reconstructed. We put maybe 10 or 15 thousand into it." He looks at his grandfather.

"And then the inspectors came out and told us the building was condemned." Williams nods. "Bad foundation. We had nothing in writing."

All that work, all those dreams, all that money, lost.

Well, not all the dreams. The sisters were still cooking, people were still smiling at every hot meal, and the requests for more kept hope alive. The family found the empty building on East Main, today’s location, and rolled up their sleeves again.

"This time we got everything in writing," Shaw says. "This time we used a lawyer."

As things turned out, the new location had more good things going for it. Parking is plentiful, and the sisters plan to expand an outdoor area for warmer seasons on the south side of the building.

And word is getting around. "Food that speaks to the soul," is painted over the window to the kitchen. That saying, according to the sisters, comes from a patron in response to one of their dishes.

Each sister has her specialty in the kitchen, although all can take the other’s place with ease and expertise. Mya is the baker, baking chocolate cakes, butter rum bundt cakes, caramel cakes and sweet potato pies. Tameka tweaks the food to healthier versions, and Marquitta seasons the food by taste and fries up the meat dishes that keep people’s chairs pushed up to the table.

The menu is reasonably priced, with dinners from $6 to $9, sides from $1 to $5, and desserts at $3. A sample platter at $17.50 often appears as a special on the board at the door, and is an excellent way to sample three meats and three sides.

Buying three dinners can get you a fourth dinner free, but it can be nearly impossible to choose from smothered pork chops, catfish, fried chicken, barbequed ribs, Sista’s rice, cabbage, fried corn or okra, mac and cheese, candied yams, black-eyed peas, mashed or scalloped potatoes, and hot water cornbread that should come with a warning label as addictive.

"We want everyone who comes here to feel like one of the family," says Marquitta Williams.

Sistas in the Kitchen Sistas in the Kitchen is open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday, 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday. For more information about catering services or Valentine’s Day specials, including delivery, call 269-459-6419.

Zinta Aistars is creative director for Z Word, LLC, and editor of the literary magazine,The Smoking Poet. She lives on a farm in Hopkins.

Photos by Erik Holladay