Years ago, over plates piled high with her cousin’s chicken and mac, a friend told me that fruit punch is the wine that pairs best with soul food.
If this is accurate, then the watermelon fruit punch at Seana’s Caribbean Soul Food is Manischewitz.
“It’s too sweet for me,” owner Joshua Johnson admitted, or maybe warned, right before I took my first sip, at which point my pupils dilated to pie plates.
Viscous. Tertiary aromas of citrus — mostly lemon. Maybe a little lime. Whisper-fine notes of watermelon. With a jackhammer cotton candy finish.
Dilution from the ice did virtually nothing to make this drink — a popular one on Seana’s rotating punch list that includes mango and pina colada — taste less like a concentrate. And so, as a food writer with a whole fried snapper among other goodies in the back seat, I did what came naturally.
I turned it into a watermelon fruit punch martini with a lemon-sugar rim.
Once plated, it didn’t look remotely out of place with the fish and to be honest, save the delicious, tender collards — lightly smoky, with hunks of turkey wing (which you could call “American callaloo”) the dish evoked a Caribbean vacation at a posh resort with a lofty price tag to match.
Except at Seana’s this daily special, two sides included costs $15.
But if Johnson is the man at the top, brother Corey is the chef, and his sweet mom Pam, is the face out front — who’s Seana?
Turns out she’s basically a concept.
“I always loved the name,” Johnson, 31, told me — not long before I took that first sugary sip — and over the years it stuck with him. For the record (and since he told me many people mispronounce it) it’s said like Shawna. “And it holds for me a sense of the community I wanted to bring.”
It rings true, I see, as smiling faces — staff and customers — interact. And in the simply worded mural over the dining space: BRINGING EVERYONE TOGETHER.
“There’s nothing like good conversation over good food with people you never thought you’d talk to,” says Johnson, who’s traveled to tens of countries — Botswana, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic are a few among those he rattles off — always alone, with the end goal of making connections.
“I have memories from when I was younger, my aunties having those big, long tables and everyone would sit down and it was nice,” he says. “It’s one of the reasons we don’t have a TV. I feel like everyone, and my generation in particular — we’re always on our phones 24/7. I wanted to bring conversation back. It feels like so many people don’t know how anymore.”
It’s an exceedingly warm and noble concept, though folks may have a tough time doing so without full mouths. This food is good.
Spicy jerk wings (that didn’t get rubbery on the ride home, I might add). Ridiculous-tender oxtail, its brown sauce subtly warm with allspice. Flaky, savory beef patties. That crispy snapper. And a fried pork chop platter with two massive chops that I do NOT recommend eating all in one sitting. Sides like the collards and “liquid gold” mac will please, as well.
They have a seafood version of that, too. Precisely the dish that put Johnson, who says he was a “picky McDonald’s kid,” on the path to owning his own soul food joint.
“Oh, I was a burgers and wings kid,” he admits, though there were some solid soul food cooks in his family. “So boring. Not the person who would try new things. But this had crab and shrimp. It was so good!”
After spending considerable time in Brooklyn as an aspiring model and actor, Johnson noticed not only the pervasive blandness of his hometown’s restaurant scene — “fast food everywhere!” — but that many of the soul food eateries operated out of larger businesses, with no real place to sit. “Not too many people feel comfortable eating out of gas stations,” he says.
“I wanted to create a place where whether you’re white, Asian, black and so forth — that you would feel comfortable,” he says. “And also, when food is buffet-style, you don’t always know how long it’s been sitting there. I wanted to have everything cooked-to-order in a place where you could actually sit down to enjoy your meal.”
Above all, he says, “I wanted to be so good and so inviting that customers come in, sit at the long tables and end up having a chat.”
For now, COVID-related rules have the food (even dine-in) coming out in takeaway boxes, but before too long, chatty patrons will be doing so over the comforting communal clank of real plates and silverware.
Just make sure you say it, don’t spray it.
Seana’s Caribbean Soul Food: 719 Good Homes Road in Orlando; 321-800-6846 or facebook.com/SeanasCooking/
Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com.
