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A Changing Harlem Celebrates the Queen of Soul Food

By KIA GREGORY


Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Sylvia and Herbert Woods in 1997 in front of the restaurant, which had, by then, become popular with tourists.

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The marquee was dark outside her restaurant the night Sylvia Woods, known to so many as the Queen of Soul Food, died at 86.

But the legacy of her food flowed as usual. On Thursday night, Sylvia’s restaurant, on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, was packed with diners digging into the staples of Southern cooking that have made the place world-famous: fried chicken, ribs, collard greens, corn bread, sweet potatoes and baked macaroni and cheese.

“It’s just good home cooking, and there’s a lot of love in the food,” said Jerry Wright, 36, who has been a customer since he was a teenager.

Sylvia’s opened in 1962 as not much more than a counter with more stools than tables in a Harlem troubled by drugs, crime and blight. From that modest start, the restaurant has evolved into a big business — a sprawling space that can hold hundreds of diners, a banquet hall, a catering service, a nearby lounge, a real estate company and a nationally distributed line of prepared food.

The neighborhood, too, has been transformed, with pockets filled with diverse and more well-to-do residents. Tour buses roll through the streets every day.

And while Sylvia’s is still celebrated as a Harlem institution and a meeting place for its black establishment, some longtime residents say a bit of its appeal has been lost as it has become a tourist attraction and a magnet for more upscale diners.

“It was a neighborhood joint,” said Max Vesterhalt, a regular at Sylvia’s. “Then it started to become famous around the world.”

A few blocks from Sylvia’s, on the side of the shuttered Rice High School, a group of women laughed and talked as they sat in a row of chairs on the sidewalk on a warm summer night.

Joan Avila, a retired nurse who has lived in Harlem for 40 years and rents a room nearby, said she had been to Sylvia’s a few times in the past. “Tourists cater to it,” she said. “If you don’t know how to cook, you don’t know the difference.”

The women said much of the new Harlem was out of reach for them. “We can’t afford that,” Ms. Avila said, noting the shiny restaurants just a short walk away. A few of her friends nodded in agreement. “People from downtown can,” she added.

Still, the woman who was the guiding force behind Sylvia’s was remembered fondly for creating a place that, in addition to food, also offered hospitality and warmth.

“She was wonderful,” Ms. Vesterhalt said. “I would come in and give her a hug.”

Ms. Vesterhalt stops in often for the breakfast special, her favorite: salmon cakes and grits. And for chitterlings, whenever she’s in the mood. But more so, to see familiar faces. “You just stayed, and talked to everybody,” she said. “That’s part of it. You meet people you haven’t seen in ages.”

Being at Sylvia’s was like being at your mother’s table, several regulars said. Ms. Woods doted on everyone, they said, always asking, “What can I get you to eat?”

“When I was to have any political affairs or guests, she never asked me anything,” said Representative Charles B. Rangel, who held an election night party last month at Sylvia’s to celebrate a victory in his Congressional primary. “She just treated me like when I would come home from school and Mom was there. And that’s what the people felt, they were bringing friends home.”

On her 80th birthday, Ms. Woods retired and passed the torch to her children and grandchildren.

She was admired as a Harlem success story, whose mother took out on a mortgage on the family farm in South Carolina to help her daughter start the restaurant.

Ms. Woods helped steer her restaurant through some of Harlem’s most difficult years and make it an integral part of its revival.

“God’s been good to her,” said Kimberly Clark of Harlem, who went to Sylvia’s on Thursday after hearing the news of Ms. Woods’ death. “She built this legacy with nothing.”

And nodding toward the tables of white patrons dining outside, Ms. Clark said, “She brought diversity to the community.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton said: “She built something that made us all proud. But she did it without being boastful and prideful herself.”

Mr. Sharpton, who said he had known Ms. Woods most of his life and would deliver a eulogy at her funeral next week, said that for any politician traveling to Harlem, Sylvia’s was an obligatory stop.

“There has never been a major figure in our community that did not have to come by way of Sylvia’s,” Mr. Sharpton said, adding that whenever black leaders needed a place to meet to address a crisis or a sudden emergency, there was never any question where that meeting would be.

“Sylvia never took sides,” Mr. Sharpton said. “It was understood, when you walked past the doors of Sylvia’s, that your differences were left outside, and we’d have a family meeting inside. She wouldn’t let us fuss and fight. She would say ‘y’all go sit down, and have something to eat, and let’s talk about it.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/ny...soul-food.html