With a binder of grandmother's recipes as inspo, Sweet Patricia's hosts Friday night dinners

When loved ones pass on, I suppose that virtually anything can be passed down. Property, Porsches, pets, comically large sums of money.

What Andria Canella’s grandmother left to her kin was the tangible expression of love: all of her recipes.

Housed in a charmingly worn sage green notebook is the homecooking catalog of Sweet Patricia’s namesake, a compendium of hand-me-down dishes that has been the backbone of this neighborhood restaurant’s origin story.

“This was the best thing she did for us as a family,” Andria Canella said, holding her cookbook binder. “She had pancreatic cancer. She got diagnosed stage four, so she knew.”

“She fought for a year and a half,” Richelle Canella said of her grandmother-in-law, Patricia Thonus.

“We’d get a card in the mail, and it would be a ‘thinking of you’ and would have twenty of them,” she explained of how the recipes poured in. “And then you’d get a next card, and you’d have the next set of them.”

“We also have handwritten ones, too, that are really special,” said Richelle Canella. “This was her leaving her legacy.”

Andria Canella says that “a majority” of the dishes she is preparing at Sweet Patricia’s for what are now bimonthly Friday dinners are taken from the little green cookbook.

“I’m serving you like my grandmother would have served you at her house,” she said. “The food tasted good, and you felt like you were welcome. That was the bottom line for her.”

If, at first, it fizzles out...

In the summer of 2023, the Canellas began serving Friday-night dinners, starting with one, to see if it would sell out, which quickly became a weekly event.

“Originally, it was to supplement,” Richelle Canella shared. “During the summer, we got really slow, SCAD [students] left, and we had to survive.”

“Really, the first year of business is super-difficult and challenging, so we weren’t sure that we would survive summer,” Andria Canella confessed.

Because of the hot-month timing, though, the endeavor “just kind of fizzled out,” she said, and she and her wife quickly realized that four weekend events per month were a drain on supplies and their own energy.

The couple “pumped the brakes” and reintroduced the dinners at the calendar’s turn to 2024, and “since then, it’s really picked up steam.”

What resumed as once-a-month meals became bimonthly in March, and the spots have been booked quickly, mostly by repeat diners.

“I can do twice a month where I get five hours of sleep,” Andria Canella said and smiled. “I can’t do it every week.”

“What we notice is that people come in, they eat, and then before they leave, they want to know when’s the next slot they can get,” she explained. “Right now, I think we have three open tables total in May.”

“For us, too, we know summer’s coming again, so this is a good way to ensure business,” continued the restaurant’s chef and primary baker.

“Thankfully, we survived that first year, and these have become a lifeline for us in a lot of ways, guaranteed extra income,” Richelle Canella said.

The first few were priced at $60 a person, and last month, the seating price rose to $70. The Canellas anticipate another increase because of the quality of the cuisine, the generous course portions, and the popularity of the events, which accommodate thirty total guests for a simultaneous seating-and-serving.

“Definitely, for the food we serve you, it is worth it, and I feel like we are giving people really good quality. It’s just not done fancy,” said Andria Canella.

The actual Fridays are scheduled ad hoc, largely depending on what the calendar holds for holidays and what makes sense for a given month.

A true home-cooked, four-course meal

At Sweet Patricia’s dinners, options for four courses are always offered, but the exact menus are not released until a week prior, which has not deterred diners one bit.

Usually two entrées, occasionally three, are available, and prior suppers have starred house-made ravioli, Italian sausage, lemon ricotta dumplings, pork belly, porchetta, and roasted chicken. Vegetarian options are always on the menu, which has featured four courses from the get-go, and the only unchanging dishes are the second-course choices.

“Everybody loves the tomato bisque soup, so we keep that every dinner,” said Andria Canella. “Our repeat customers say that’s one of the reasons they keep coming back.”

“Of course, if you skip six months, you might have something similar again,” Richelle Canella added, “but we never run the same things back-to-back.”

Harkening on her heritage, Andria Canella collects Sicilian cookbooks to supplement her grandmother’s recipes, and roughly two weeks before the next dinner, she does her R&D, always starting “from the top,” planning the appetizers.

“All the time,” she said of how often she thinks of her grandma, especially during these dinners. “I think she would be most proud of the environment.”

“She was one of the most sophisticated people I ever met, but at the same time, you would find her out in her garden every day, picking her own weeds, because that was at the root of who she was,” she shared.

“I’m trying to create that family environment,” Andria Canella said. “When you come in here, you feel welcomed.”

One evening, a bike club took up a ten-top, and at the first March event, two separate parties of 10 and eight made for a lively atmosphere while other tables sat date-night duos.

“It is cool to have groups of people who want to congregate here,” she said of the friends-and-family-reunion ambience that was so important to her grandmother. “I think she’d be proud of the food that we do, but I really think the heart of it is what we create.”

Throughout the evening, both Canellas are present. Richelle takes all four course orders at once so that Andria can prepare accordingly in the kitchen. They and their servers visit with each guest. Folks are in their adorable home more than they are in a restaurant.

A bakery and much more

The couple is readying a redo of the logo to show that Sweet Patricia’s is more "restaurant" than just "bakery" as it was under its original billing.

“Not because we’re doing fewer baked goods but because we’re doing a lot more,” reasoned Andria Canella, “and I don’t think many people know that we do so much. It’s a way to broaden our horizons a little bit.”

They have also been working on licensing for beer and wine, but that has been a function of the Canellas not having the time because they are scratch-making everything and serving everything with the help of Mo, Sweet Patricia’s “O.G.” server, and Olivia, who rotate working the Friday night events.

All in good time. For now, this will be Thomas Square’s bakery by day and its homespun trattoria two Fridays a month.

When you go, ask the Canellas to show you Grandma Patricia’s recipe book. They will share it proudly and tell you the stories contained between the ingredients. You might even see the recipe for what you are eating that night.

Sweet Patricia’s (1722 Habersham Street) is open Tuesday through Sunday (9 a.m. to 4 p.m.) as well as for reservation-only bimonthly Friday dinner events.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Sweet Patricia's begins bimonthly Friday night dinners