Fried Chicken Nuggies
Chef/owner Adena Marcelino, Black Beans, Providence
When I was growing up, fried chicken was the highlight of many Sunday dinners. Learning to properly fry chicken became a rite of passage! So, whe...
home on the range
Black Beans PVD
Comfort From-Scratch Cooking with Adena “Bean” Marcelino
Growing up in Providence’s West End in the 1980s and gathering food from her family’s large garden, Adena Marcelino was steeped in cooking and activism. The two often blended when large social events turned into organizing around community issues.
For her “comfort food” pop-up—soon to be brick-and-mortar—eatery on the West End, called Black Beans PVD, Marcelino (or “Bean,” her lifelong nickname) will follow that path, inviting young people from the neighborhood to learn about food from their cultures—how to grow it and how to cook it. And she will serve them scratch-made meals from many traditions: traditional Southeast Asian, Latino and Italian will mix in with classic soul food.
“Our cultures have so much in common,” she says: “calzones, dumplings, pierogi, empanadas, hand pies.”
“My [Black Beans] food is like what I cook on weekends and for my friends when they come over,” says Marcelino, a happy lilt in her voice. “I try to keep it real food.”
She makes her own sauces, pickles, doughs, breads, even a bit of cheese. Many of her dishes have become familiar for the pop-up events she’s known for at Long Live Beer-works and as grab-and-go meals over the long months of planning and building for her own 25-seat spot since 2019. (Black Beans PVD will soon occupy its own café space located in Southside Community Land Trust’s new Healthy Food Hub on Broad Street in Providence.)
After working in social services for 13 years, Marcelino turned to full-time cooking seven years ago. She interned at local restaurants, sometimes making tortillas and pastries for them; she supervised at Knead Donuts; and she got to know the best sources for hard-to-find foodstuffs.
She located items such as rabbit, which she chicken-fries at Easter (groaning to herself about the offbeat humor in that). She salvaged spent grains from the brewery, which she puts into her breads, biscuits and doggy treats. And she found sources of local fruits for her summer jams, hams to home-cure, mustard seeds for her own mustard, and the list goes on.
Until recently Marcelino spurned even a rolling pin: “I like actually having my hands in the food—that’s the passion for me—and we might be the last generation to do it in this way.”
“Being able to cook every single day and to make my own queso fresco, mozzarella, burrata— that’s been my dream,” she says. “My eventual goal is to have my own farm with goats for goat cheese.”
And, at Black Beans PVD, she plans to have classes about most of her home-cooked foods. The name of her cooking enterprise, from its earliest days, was based on her own nickname and her youngest son’s obsession with black beans and rice.
Marcelino’s most frequent dishes and pastries include smothered pork chops, chicken over grits, meatloaf, hand pies, sweet-potato biscuits—”lots of baked goods”—and, of course, black beans and rice.
She aims to keep her menu prices low and pay her staff high, to showcase local growers and to show the community that she’s “not just a business being a business.”
“I want it to feel like people are coming to my living room and I’m cooking for friends.”
Keep updated with Black Beans PVD on social @BakedBeanPVD for grab-and-go meals and the opening of the café. Visit online at BlackBeansPVD.com.
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