Ico print Print | Ico email Email | Facebook |

features

Cakes and kindness

Claire's Corner Copia has nourished town and gown for 50 years.

By Tina Kelley ’85 | Sep/Oct 2025

Tina Kelley ’85  is a former New York Times reporter and author of two nonfiction and four poetry books. 

Will it be the Lithuanian coffee cake or the carrot cake? At Claire’s Corner Copia, the lunch line still snakes along the counter and out to the tables. Customers still crane to see the seemingly endless list of options on the back blackboard (avocado confetti tartine? Sicilian-style broccoli rabe?) and debate the dessert options on the counter (if Lithuanian coffee cake: with or without the icing?). And founder Claire LaPia Criscuolo remains attentive and maternal, roaming the floor, checking in, keeping watch. 

For 50 years as of this month, the vegetarian restaurant on the corner of Chapel and College Streets has drawn homesick freshmen, hungry New Haveners, students with head colds, and anyone else looking for comfort food and a welcoming table. They tend to gather around Criscuolo, described by her late husband, Frank, as “a social worker with an apron.” 

Criscuolo is preparing to celebrate the store’s 50th anniversary on September 17, with local dignitaries, music, and a special anniversary drink. Her new cookbook, 50 Vegetarian Recipes from 50 Years at Claire’s Corner Copia, came out in June as part of the celebration, and all proceeds from it and other anniversary-related swag (“Kale Them with Kindness” t-shirts,  hats that proclaim “Be Kinder Than Necessary,” and candles that smell like Lithuanian coffee cake) will go to the Be Kinder Than Necessary project, focusing on teaching local children about empathy. Criscuolo aims to raise $100,000, part of her long-standing charitable work.

Criscuolo, 74, grew up in Wooster Square, where her grandfather, a grocer who never learned English, landed when he emigrated from Amalfi, Italy. She attributes her love of food to him and other relatives, including her grandmother, who would fix her breakfast eggnog, beating egg yolks into the sugar until they turned lemony yellow, then adding warm milk, a drop of vanilla, and a drop of espresso.
“I didn’t even know boxed pudding was a thing until college,” she says, noting that growing up poor had its advantages: She knew to appreciate foods made from scratch. Her mother, “a big fan of real food” who never gave pantry space to Chef Boyardee, made soup daily, all year long. 

Interested in child psychology, Criscuolo opted to become a nurse. During her senior year at the University of Bridgeport School of Nursing, she met her future husband Frank at a bowling alley as part of a ruse: her girlfriend wanted to meet Frank’s buddy, so she brought Claire along to pretend to be interested in a Cadillac Frank was trying to sell.
 
They married in February 1975 and opened the restaurant in September, as a way to spend more time together. The restaurant’s name was suggested by a Yale student, Jeff Barca-Hall ’80, the winner of a naming contest. His prize was a weekly hot fudge sundae for four. 

Criscuolo was adept at making bread and soup stocks, but with no formal training as a chef, she decided to teach herself, cooking her way through the Larousse Gastronomique: The World’s Greatest Culinary Encyclopedia, all 1,200 pages.

Business was slow to take off initially, but glowing reviews in the Yale Daily News helped boost her bottom line; one said her smoothies “would cure hangovers as big as Idaho.”

“It took me decades of being terrified that we would not be ready for lunch,” she says. “I learned so much, like that selling out of something is not the end of the world.”

Criscuolo finds the business relentless and competitive. “You’re only as good as your last falafel,” she says. But along the way, she learned lessons that went far beyond the food. 

“It’s the people that create the energy in Claire’s,” she says, speaking fondly of the businesswoman who sits at a table without her phone, watching New Haven stroll by, and of the student study groups showing up for breakfast and staying for lunch. “The people who come there do good things, help children, help communities, and teach their children to say thank you,” she says.

Originally housed in a tiny corner storefront, Claire’s expanded into the adjacent storefronts, nearly doubling in size over the years. The menu has also evolved: The restaurant was vegetarian from early in its history, but it is now also organic, sustainable, and kosher for dairy, with a host of vegan and gluten-free dishes. The restaurant has signed a pledge stating that its produce would come from no further away than 100 miles, although Criscuolo makes an exception for organic strawberries, hard to find year-round. Although it may not solve her strawberry dilemma, she’s excited about a new organic hydroponic vendor in Guilford, H20 Farm. 

Criscuolo also serves as an associate fellow at Grace Hopper College, where she has taught students how to bake potatoes and poach eggs, though she would throw in a few more complicated dishes too.

With students in mind, the restaurant offers a $16 box of 16 desserts, 16 minutes before closing time, and “No minimum on credit cards. No maximum on Love,” according to the Claire’s website, which also describes the restaurant’s ideal job candidates: “We always welcome people who are enthusiastic about life and the possibility of sustainability, social justice, and peace.”

Claire’s employees tend to stick around, she says, rattling off a list of dishwashers and kitchen managers who have worked for 20, 25, 28, and 32 years. She said she pays higher than minimum wage, provides money for health insurance, and encourages workers to take days off when they need to. 

“Don’t let me find out your kid had a recital, and you didn’t go,” she laughs. 
Her staff and customers returned the kindnesses when Frank passed away 14 years ago, the same year as Criscuolo’s mother, two steady presences in the restaurant. “This community saved me,” she says. 

And it is the community that has helped the restaurant succeed through economic downturns, a pandemic, and renovations, she adds. “We know it’s not just good food that keeps people well, not just food and exercise. We need each other, and the sooner we recognize that, the better off we’re going to be.”

Contributing to New Haven charities is a decades-long tradition at Claire’s. It started with a coat drive in the early 1990s, run in partnership with Dwight Hall and Jet Cleaners, a local dry cleaner who donated services pro bono to refresh donated coats. Next, she provided food for the New Haven Project for Battered Women volunteer recognition dinner. And for a “Cooking for CASA” event for court-appointed special advocates for children in foster care, she used her contacts in the food industry, local orchestras, and even ice sculptors.

“You think wow, imagine the good you could do, and then you become addicted to it,” she says. “You just think ‘Oh my God, I could help other people, I could use my voice.’” 

Claire’s also sponsors events for New Haven Reads, hosts art shows for local artists, and partners with the Yale Child Study Center. She met Carolina Parrott, an assistant clinical professor of social work at the center, in the restaurant, and the two got to talking about at-risk young people. They developed a “Someone Cares Closet” for clients of the center to receive hygiene products including toothpaste, soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, and combs, and they gathered donations from the Yale and New Haven communities.  

Michael Morand ’87, ’93MDiv, director of community engagement at the Beinecke Library, has admired the restaurant’s charity work and enjoyed eating at Claire’s since he was an undergraduate. He says the staff—not just Criscuolo—readily talks to customers and introduces people to each other.

“It is really an essential thing of Claire’s, and it happens even if she’s not there. It’s the spirit of the people who work there,” he says. He noted that while other spots in town have lasted 100 years, like Frank Pepe’s pizzeria and Enson’s Gentlemen’s Fashions, “50 years is a notable thing for an institution, and it’s even more notable” when the founder is in charge all those years, he adds. “The combination of good food with great people makes the difference.” 

Sandra Cashion ’92 says that her Yale a cappella group, Proof of the Pudding, celebrated each other’s birthdays with Claire’s Lithuanian coffee cakes. Criscuolo closed the restaurant so it could host the group’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2025, right around the restaurant’s own 50th. 

“I think that Claire’s, over the years, has been like the best surrogate parent or surrogate older sibling for everyone who has walked in, especially for Yale students,” says Cashion, adding that she knew at least one classmate who considered it a safe space in tough times, far preferable to the dining halls. Criscuolo herself says “a lot” of married couples have had their first dates at Claire’s. More may follow. Criscuolo  has started hosting speed-dating evenings for grad students and undergraduates.

“She really does just tell you the way it is,” says Cashion. “Food is medicine, you’re loved, be kind, eat your veggies, and save some room for dessert.”  

Ico print Print | Ico email Email | Facebook |

Post a comment