It’s a Family Affair
Catey Hillier finds herself moved by both the gospel music and the soul food at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem.
“Hey, there. If you’re on your way to Sylvia’s, you’re heading off the wrong way.” A well-dressed woman in matching suit and hat catches me off my guard. I never stop to check my guidebook in public for fear of being recognised as a tourist, but she’d rumbled me anyway. “Sylvia’s restaurant is right along Lenox Avenue. You’re on Martin Luther King, honey.” It turns out that consulting a map would have been a good idea after all (even though I’d been up that way only yesterday), but then I would never have had the good fortune to bump into my guide, whose name turns out to be Alma.
From the way she’s dressed, it’s clear she is on her way to church. But she divulges, as we walk along past rows of slightly down-at-heel brownstones, that what is really on her mind is next week’s church outing – a bus trip to Atlantic City to play the one-armed bandits. “Losing $100 is fine. In the eyes of the Lord, that’s not serious gambling, now, is it?” We arrive at Sylvia’s before I could either agree or disagree. “Have a nice lunch, honey. It’s good, real good: Sylvia’s the queen of soul food.” The sign outside the restaurant says so, too.
Sylvia’s is the most famous restaurant in Harlem, and every Sunday it becomes the venue for a kind of gospel cabaret which has attracted the attention of the nation at large. Trying to ignore all the other tourists getting off coaches and massing on the pavement, I am escorted to my table past scores of locals polishing off breakfast. Within ten minutes of sitting down, though, which is just enough time to down a South Carolina Rum Punch and cool off, they’ve all left to join Alma in church.
The round table at the back of the restaurant where I had sat with Sylvia and her husband Herbert D Woods the previous day to hear their incredible rags-to-riches story, had been replaced by a keyboard, and a man wearing a sharp, double-breasted suit is getting his fingers – and the crowd – warmed up. Without any announcement or warning, an elegant woman in a yellow, floating kaftan wafts into the dining room and her rhythmic rendition of ‘Blessed Be The Name Of The Lord…’ starts a table of four women swaying in their seats. Other diners join in and gyrate gently. The rum punch kicks in – all it takes is the opening lines to ‘Oh Happy Day’ and I’m at it as well.
From yesterday’s conversation, I know that I’m actually sitting in a former paint shop, which Sylvia and Herbert acquired in 1969 to expand the snack bar business they’d bought a few years earlier. “My mom had to re-mortgage the family farm in South Carolina to lend us the $20,000 for us to buy the luncheonette in 1962. That’s how it all started,” Sylvia explained, obviously enjoying telling the tale. Her career began as a waitress, though. “I’d walked past the luncheonette around the corner from where we lived and thought, I could be a waitress. That was my first job, back in 1955. Round about that time my salary would have been $38 a week. Herbert was cab-driving.”
The Woods’ restaurant-and-food empire to which Sylvia and her family have dedicated their lives is now worth an estimated $20m. There’s the main restaurant in Harlem that opens seven days a week from 7.30am till 10.30pm. “Can you believe we sometimes serve up to 3,000 people in a single day?”; a catering business for weddings and parties that occupies the property a few doors down; and a sister restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. And then there’s also Sylvia’s Food Products Inc, a range of 29 sauces, dressings and seasonings, from cans of ready-cooked, black-eyed peas and peach-cobbler mix to the original barbecue sauce with which her son Van Woods launched the range a decade ago. They sell into food stores and delis across the us.
And now, even though she doesn’t look a day over 50, her family has decided that she doesn’t need to work on Sundays any more. Her gospel lunches are now overseen by the management team – her four children and two of her grandchildren.
With the music filling my head, I stare at the homely mismatch of signed photos and family portraits which pepper much of the wall at Sylvia’s, eager to get a glimpse of the Woods family outside the re-mortgaged farmhouse in the southern states, the image strong in my mind. Instead, I discover a certificate recognising her achievements from the Governor of South Carolina, signed photos from the great and the good – Nelson Mandela, Kool and the Gang, the Isley brothers – and family line-ups from birthday and wedding parties long since over. A poster of the Spike Lee film Jungle Fever reminds diners that a scene was filmed in the restaurant.
The singer and keyboard player introduced themselves as Ruth and Clay Simpson respectively. “East Minnesota in the house; blessed be the name of the Lord. Minneapolis in the house.” Ruth greets and embraces two groups of visitors from different states while continuing to deliver her smooth blend of gospel jazz to the already sizeable audience. “New York in the house; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Ruth arrives at our table. “London in the house. Hey! Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
My lunch arrives and interrupts my swaying. Platefuls of barbecue spare ribs (which are described on the menu as ‘Sylvia’s world-famous, talked-about ribs with her sweet and sassy sauce’); macaroni and cheese; southern fried chicken; and collard greens – which taste like spinach – cover the table and I tuck in greedily.
Despite the gargantuan southern-sized portions, helped along by the punch and cocktails, I do the kitchen proud. The candied yams, however, boiled with brown sugar and nutmeg, are not quite to my taste, something that Sylvia’s granddaughter Trennes, who now helps manage the restaurant, picks up on when she comes over. “You not eating the yams?” She looks genuinely disappointed and I feel rather sheepish.
Later, on my way back to my hotel, having swayed and clapped and eaten my fill, I check the recipe for candied yams in Sylvia’s cookbook. Her introduction to the recipe is touching: “Whenever our family get together, we give thanks for what we have and for one another. Even the smallest great-grandchild knows that we don’t start eating before saying a blessing and a prayer. We almost always serve some kind of candied yams since it’s part of our heritage and because we all love it.”
I vow to give the dish a second chance the next time I go back.
Sylvia’s, 328 Lenox Avenue, New York, NY 10027. Tel 001 212 996 0660. ‘Sylvia’s Family Soul Food Cookbook, from Hemingway, South Carolina to Harlem’ by Sylvia Woods and Melissa Clark, published by William Morrow, £19.99.
This article was first published on Waitrose.com in July 2000
mr skin
October 5, 2006
Ooohwee, that sounds delicious. I am going to try that out tomorrow. Thanks!