Hilda's Soul Food Kitchen in Homestead serves Southern fare

The plaque below the photo of Hilda Auburn reads: “Do small things with great love.”

“My mother inspired me, because everything she did she did with love,” said her daughter Avis Williams, who opened Hilda’s Soul Food Kitchen in July in Homestead to honor her late mother. “I want this place to be like home cooking, that of my mother’s, her mother’s and my aunts who all taught me how to cook.”

JoAnne Klimovich Harrop | Tribune-Review

Avis Williams, of West Mifflin, owns Hilda’s Soul Food Kitchen in Homestead. She named the restaurant after her late mother.

Embarking on the venture amid a pandemic didn’t deter Williams. She said her mother, who died in 1982, was looking down on her and she believed it was the right thing to do.

“I was a little bit nervous, but I was also confident the Lord would bless us, and he has done just that through all of this,” said Williams, a Trafford native who lives in West Mifflin. “I prayed about it and waited and when the Lord opened the door I walked in.”

She had seen other restaurants opening during this time doing takeout and delivery. So that’s the route she took.

Williams plans to add indoor dining. Business has been doing well, she said. The restaurant specializes in Southern hospitality and cooking that she said she hopes will “bring back memories of your mother’s or grandmother’s kitchen.”

The restaurant, located on 8th Avenue, is Williams’ dream. She said her mother encouraged her to do what she loves, so she’s taking the knowledge she gained from watching the women in her life cook, and combined it with a Southern style of food that she experienced in her husband George’s home state of South Carolina, to determine the menu.

Daily specials include meatloaf and gravy with rice and Southern creamed peas, macaroni and cheese and greens, smothered pork chops, and blackened salmon or chicken tossed salads. Fridays are fish “FRYdays” with crab cakes, salmon cakes and shrimp étouffée, which means “smothered” and is a common cooking technique in the South.

Saturdays feature breakfast and a choice of barbecue chicken and ribs, hamburgers and hot dogs.

Patrons can also sample boiled peanuts and pimento cheese.

Williams said she tries to incorporate dishes people might not typically see in Pittsburgh, like oxtail.

JoAnne Klimovich Harrop | Tribune-Review

Avis Williams, of West Mifflin, owns Hilda’s Soul Food Kitchen in Homestead. She is preparing a to-go order of smothered chicken, macaroni and cheese and greens.

Her second cousin, Matteo Connor of Brentwood, stopped in to see the new place and try the daily special of smothered chicken and rice, macaroni and cheese and greens. (Smothered means gravy — and then extra gravy — Williams said.)

“I am so excited to see her restaurant,” Connor said. “This right here is a blessing.”

Williams has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She wanted to learn more so she enrolled in the hospitality operations management two-year program at Community College of Allegheny County, Boyce campus. She plans to graduate in 2021.

“I am very proud of Avis for all she has accomplished as a returning student,” said CCAC professor Michele Wehrle. “She has such a great personality, and she worked very hard to make her dream of having her own restaurant come true.”

Williams said the schooling was definitely needed to know how to promote and run the business. She said the classes she took were exactly what she needed to manage a restaurant.

“You can have the best food in the world but if you don’t know how to run the business then no one will know about you,” she said. “And you have to believe in the food you are preparing, you really have to believe.”