After the play "The Winter View," a friend and I decided to have a bite to eat and a cocktail before calling it a night.  We knew that we were a little underdressed for the Harlem Grill so we headed over to The Den.  After seeing the gathering of people waiting for tables outside The Den we continued walking down Fifth Avenue to 125th Street.  We would try either MoBay or Bayou (more about Bayou in the next post) as a last chance effort to cop a cocktail and appetizer. 

As it turned out, the wait wasn’t too long at MoBay so we waited until seats at the bar became available and ordered our cocktails.  My friend and I decided to have appetizers instead of entrees so we stayed at the bar which was lively and energetic.  The band played a long R&B set and people seemed to be enjoying themselves on the warm pre-summer night.

I ordered their special rum punch and my friend ordered a "Change of Attitude" cocktail. Both of us enjoyed our selections. The bar has seating on both sides so it made it easy for us to converse with other patrons.  We compared food items and everyone around us enjoyed what they had ordered. 

A young lady sitting across from us ordered jerk chicken wings that were a bit too spicy for her palate, but she said they were very good and ate them all in spite of her scorched taste buds.  Another young lady ordered cod fish cakes and her friend the catfish strips. My friend and I ordered crab cakes.  The wait was reasonable and the crab cakes were quite good. The outside crust was perfectly browned and crunchy while the inside was full of tasty, well-seasoned crab meat.

Sitting next to us was an Aussie turned Harlemite jazz musician who was listening in on the set of a fellow musician. The vibe was loose, light and less pretentious than expected. I still felt a little underdressed but soon forgot about it amid the conversation and good libations.

Would I go back?  The answer is a resounding yes!  I found MoBay to be a nice hang out spot great for listening to live music and enjoying well mixed (though pricey) cocktails before or after another event.  How would I rate my first visit to MoBay?  I give them three stars out of four for their service, food and ambiance.  How was your experience at MoBay?

Related: Bar Buzz :: Menu :: JC and the Jazz Hoppers

 
Our favorite foodie website Eater is notorious for their surprisingly accurate deathwatches of New York restaurants. Although we don’t want to step on anyone’s toes the recent closings we have reported lead us to present our own exclusively uptown predictions. A tipster is anticipating the next closing to be Native.  As a matter of fact, their website is already down. Due to the fact that I haven’t heard a lot of good reports about this restaurant he could be onto something. What would be even more interesting is the fact that they were recently mentioned in the New York Times article "Where to Eat" back in April. Has this 4 year old restaurant succumb to the tough audiences in Harlem or is it a false alarm? As usual, readers are welcome to chime in on their dining experiences at Native.

*Edit: An intrepid tipster simply known as Flip has informed us that indeed, Native is the next uptown restaurant on the deathwatch.  He found a real estate listing that includes the following information, "Currently operating as the French Moroccan bistro Harlem Native, this restaurant sits at the corner of 116th and Lenox Avenue in the Heart of Harlem…an art gallery is reportedly opening on the block, as is a bakery. Sorry, no nightclubs or bars." Thanks for the great detective work Flip! (see comments section for the rest of Flip’s tip.)

**Edit: In a strange twist of fate, Harlem Fur reports that a tipster informed him the new owner of Native happens to be none other than Melba Wilson of Melba’s!  As if that connection isn’t close enough Melba also happens to be the niece of Sylvia Woods of Sylvia’s.   

A newcomer that soon may be added to the deathwatch is Baton Rouge on 145th Street. It is co-owned by the same people who own Mo Bay and is located in the brownstone formerly known as the Sugar Hill Bistro.  Nothing good has been said about this restaurant on sites like Chowhound and today I noticed that they placed fliers under the windshield wipers of cars in the neighborhood - to drum up business???  Even if the food isn’t any good the drinks sound lovely (see their website). Anyone who has tried Baton Rouge please add your thoughts. Do you think that it can survive the unforgiving palates of Harlemites?

Back in April Harlem Fur wrote a lovely review of a little known restaurant called Elle & Lui near 119th Street.  A tipster on his site recently delivered the sad news that Elle & Lui are no more. June 22nd is the scheduled opening of a new "gourmet soul food restaurant."  Oh boy!  Just what we need in Harlem! As a lover of soul food and one who grew up with the savory goodness of homecooked greens and spicy red beans, I am not a huge fan of "gourmet" soul food cuisine. As a writer and a general optimist,  here’s hoping for the best. No name has been given to the new restaurant as of yet.  Naturally, we at UPTOWN flavor will keep you posted.

*update: the new owners kept the old phone number and have a message stating that the new name of the restaurant is Billie’s Black.  Their website is: Billie’s Black.com [website]

Also in April we wrote about a new restaurant called Butterfly Blue but it has pretty much under the rader since then. If any readers have been to B.B. please let us know about your experience.  We found the following from February:

"A cute little cozy restaurant just opened called " Butterfly Blue,"

Located at 1813 Amsterdam Avenue (Near 150th Street) on
Thursday’s, Live Jazz …real Jazz …Great Food! Great Drinks! GREAT
MUSIC! Friendly Atmosphere! You never know who you will see in this spot! 7:00pm - 10:00pm on Thursday’s"

Butterfly Blue Caribbean Style Restaurant
1813 Amsterdam Ave. (Corner 150th Street)
(212) 234 - 5334
No Cover Charge!

It was bound to happen.  As if in response to the question posed by the New York Times back in April, "Where to Eat?" the plans for a meat packing district style restaurant row are underway for a five block area along the Hudson River in Harlem. Those familar with the area know that Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has already made a home in the area and the rumored arrival of the Hudson River Cafe seems to finally be coming to light this summer.  Read more about the forthcoming restaurant row here.

BATON ROUGE IN HARLEM

[Excerpt…]

"All of our dreams were realized the day the doors opened and we were able to provide for our neighborhood," says Jones, co-owner of Sugar Hill. "We designed the house to be a true community gathering place with the jazz lounge on the first floor, dining room on the second, and community space on the top two floors; we wanted our neighbors to think of this space as their own."

Sugar Hill Bistro served the Harlem community well, but its doors have long been closed. Now another eatery and gathering place has come to take its space on 145th Street–Baton Rouge, a New Orleans style restaurant and lounge. Real estate broker Brian Phillips of Sotheby’s International Realty sold the Sugar Hill building to its new owners Sheron and Joe Barnes, who before bringing MoBay Uptown to Harlem, first launched MoBay, a popular Brooklyn-based Caribbean eating place.  With Baton Rouge, Sheron and Joe have opened what will certainly be another colorful culinary treat.

Source: Uptown Magazine [website]

 

In addition to the previously mentioned restaurants that have cropped up on Harlem’s Sugarhill I just discovered Baton Rouge, the sister restaurant to Mo Bay, that has taken up residence in what was previously known as The Sugar Hill Bistro on 145th Street.  This prime location places them in direct competition with Copeland’s  located a city block away. Reviews to follow.

Two new eateries have moved on uptown. 

Remember the infamous "Seinfeld" sitcom episode featuring the "Soup Nazi?"  Well, there are now 2 franchises existing above 96th Street.  The Original Soupman has opened a location at 112th and Broadway and another is slated to open on Lenox Avenue above 125th Street. The Soupman has decided to kept the rules he enforced at the original location, so be sure to follow them or suffer the consequences of "no soup for you."

In an earlier post I noted that Harlem is expecting a brand new bowling alley on the same site of the historic Alhambra Ballroom.  On the lower level, formerly the Alhambra Theater,  a new seafood restaurant bar and grill named Pier 2110 will provide an perfect meetup location for dinner and cocktails before or after a game as an alternative to the noshes available in the alley upstairs.

UPTOWN flavor can be contacted via email 

Art credits: Micheal Singletary
email: m.singletary@verizon.net

Poets, Musicians & Spoken Word Artists

Your Hostess:                                                                    
DeBorah
Friday, February 17, 2006
7:00 PM
A Tribute to Flowing Vibrations
Listen in on Some Awesome Lyrics

1793-A Madison Avenue
SE Corner @118th Street
New York, NY 10035
(212) 348-3471

The Harlem Tea Room’s Menu:
An assortment of teas, delicious sandwiches, hot soup, salad, quiche, cookies & milk
and a display of delectable desserts

Limited Seating
$8.00 Minimum Purchase per person

Flowing Vibrations in Harlem
Friday, February 17th / 7:00pm - 10:00pm
This month Flowing Vibrations celebrates its 1 year anniversary. Poets and spectators are invited to come from near and far to celebrate this glorious occasion of Spoken Word. Hosted By Deborah Gray.
$7 per person admission charge. Free Refreshments

January 2006

A prognosticating peek at travel’s new world order

On the town: At Ginger’s bar, where specialties include the Typhoon Legend, a mix of pink champagne, plum juice, and ginger purée

Urban: Heat Seeking
Where will travel’s cool kids be heading next? Read on

Manhattanites fleeing the steep rents downtown have been rehabbing Harlem’s gritty reputation. New developments are reaching critical mass, cementing the neighborhood’s status as the one to check out. Ginger, an organic Chinese restaurant from the owner of the East Village spot Butter, is just unveiling in Harlem’s first "green" building (1400 Fifth Ave.; 212-423-1111; entrées, $8–$19). Carol’s Daughter, a bath and beauty emporium, launched in late 2005, with an opening that attracted Jay Z and Jada Pinkett Smith (24 W. 125th St.; 212-828-6757). Hotels are coming too: A Courtyard Marriott debuts in late 2006, and Starwood is said to be looking near the Apollo Theater for a W Hotel site.

 

Source: Conde Nast Traveler

M&G Diner

Greens in Black and White

By WARREN ST. JOHN

O most Southerners, few things are as pleasing as plopping down before a heaping plate of simple, home-style cooking  dishes like collard or turnip greens, fried chicken, black-eyed peas, corn bread, sweet potato casserole. This type of food is so evocative of the easygoing contentment of home that Southerners and even much of the rest of America  refer to it simply as comfort food.

But there’s a potentially uncomfortable conversation to be had about Southern comfort food, one that has simmered like creamy gravy on a stove top for perhaps 20 years and may now reach a very public boil: how much of what is called Southern cooking can be traced to black culture, and how much to white?

That discussion is the centerpiece of a conference that begins tomorrow at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, the fifth annual gathering of the Southern Foodways Alliance. With this year’s conference, "Southern Food in Black & White," organizers and participants plan to take head-on the task of trying to sort out who gets credit for what’s on the Southern table.

It will not be easy or neat. At past Southern Foodways conferences, discussions on the origin of fried chicken, barbecue and Southern baked goods like biscuits have led to shouting matches. Participants at this year’s discussion, particularly chefs and food historians who say they are fighting for what they believe is the proper recognition for their ancestors’ role in the creation of Southern cuisine, expect it to be similarly heated.

"It’s not about, `Sit there quiet in the corner and wait to get credit,’ because that’s not going to happen," said Joe Randall, an African-American chef from Savannah, Ga., who says blacks haven’t been given proper credit for their contribution to Southern food. "You have to go forth and claim the contribution that our forefathers have made."

In some ways the debate over the African-American influence on Southern food is a more opaque version of the debate over black contributions to rock ‘n’ roll. It’s accepted that because blacks long served as cooks to Southern whites, first as slaves and then as domestics, they had a profound influence on the cuisine. But because whites wrote and published most of the early cookbooks on Southern food, there are few culinary equivalents of early Robert Johnson recordings to establish the provenance of particular dishes.

"Who did the original, and who did the cover?" asked Jessica B. Harris, an African-American food historian and cookbook author. "It’s about acknowledging the unacknowledged."

But many white Southerners, particularly the poor and descendants of impoverished Appalachian yeomen who never had slaves and who could not have afforded domestic help, argue that Southern food must have been theirs. "If you talk to rural white people, they feel that that’s their food," said Nathalie Dupree, the writer, whose books include the influential "New Southern Cooking," just released in paperback by the University of Georgia Press. "When you say maybe this came from Africa, they look at you like you’re crazy."

And there’s even a debate about whether there should be a debate. Some chefs argue that because of the influence of American Indians, Asians and intermarriage on local cuisine, attempting to sort out who contributed what is an impossible and ultimately pointless task.

"Food belongs to everybody," said Leah Chase, a New Orleans chef widely recognized as the doyenne of Creole cooking and a member of Southern Foodways who has long criticized the debate over the origin of Southern food. "If I take a mess of greens and cook them and serve them to you, are they my greens, or your greens? Of course not. They’re everybody’s greens."

Sorting out white from black is difficult in part because in the South white and black cuisines are remarkably similar. Consider the lunch menus at two restaurants across town from each other in Tuscaloosa, Ala. At the Waysider, which has a mostly white clientele, customers can dine on fried chicken, green beans, black-eyed peas and corn bread, delivered to the table in small plastic bowls and washed down with sweet tea.

Across town at KSV, which serves a mostly black clientele, the lunchtime menu includes country fried steak, collard greens, candied yams, black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, green beans and corn bread. Joe Taylor, the owner of KSV, said there are only a couple of dishes on the menu that are pretty much exclusively ordered by his black customers: neck bones, and hog maws, or the lining of a pig’s stomach.

"It’s no different, really," he said. "It just depends on who buys it."

Even the most basic generalizations about what foods are black in origin and which white are fraught. Hot peppers, melons, okra, rice and sesame seeds are thought to have been introduced to the South from Africa, along with techniques like slow-cooking greens with fat flavoring, a style of cooking similar to the one used to make leafy African stews. Creamy sauces and gravies, along with biscuits, white-flour pastries, puddings and trifles, are usually credited to the European influence. But John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, said any such sweeping statements are bound to spark arguments.

"When you say black folks eat more chitlins, you start to get in trouble, because a food like that is totemic to white and black Southerners," he said. "Both see it as reaching back to the tough times they survived. Both see it as food imbued with meaning, and that doesn’t go away."

For years African-Americans were given credit for comfort food, though in a complicated way. Adrian Miller, a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton and the program director of the symposium, said that in surveys he had done of old Southern cookbooks from the late 1800’s and the first half of the 20th century, white authors were comfortable crediting black cooks for the cuisine, so long as that acknowledgment was tied up in nostalgia for the old South and its racial hierarchy.

Mr. Randall, the African-American chef from Savannah, said there was a kind of perverse compliment to blacks in advertising symbols from those days, like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben.

"Madison Avenue had it right in the 1930’s," he said. "A big healthy black woman in the kitchen cooking was synonymous with good food."

The willingness of whites to acknowledge black contributions to Southern food diminished during the civil rights movement, Mr. Miller said, when African-Americans began to assert their claim on Southern cuisine. The term soul food, for example, gained currency in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as part of that effort. Some black chefs and food historians now say the term is limiting because it marginalizes the black version of Southern food, which, they argue, is mostly black food to begin with.

"I think it’s an intricate part of food in America, but it’s not the totality of the contribution African-Americans have made," Mr. Randall said. "If you limit it to the food in Harlem and mom and pop soul food places in the South, then you devalue it."

The Southern Foodways symposium in Oxford will try to balance serious academic discourse with good eating. The conference will begin with a whole pig roast, and over three days and meals of fried catfish, Coca-Cola brisket, grillades and deviled eggs  attendees will hear lectures with titles like "Possum ‘n’ Taters Where Have You Gone?" and "Methods and Ethnographics of Watermelon Pickles."

In the past talk in these sessions has inevitably turned to race, whether that was the primary aim or not, and frequently the conversations resulted in hurt feelings. A speaker who claimed that fried chicken had European origins, for instance, caused "a collective hissy fit," Mr. Edge said.

Discussions of barbecue were similarly charged; white attendees pointed out that poor whites in the mountains were long known to have barbecued meat, while black participants countered that in the old South, the task of keeping a hickory fire burning through the night would have fallen to African-Americans.

"We’ve had shouting matches," Ms. Dupree said. "I’ve been infuriated, because people have called me racist, just because I would say something was white. It’s taught me how emotional an issue this is."

Mr. Edge said the hope of the conference was that by dealing directly with the issue of race and Southern food, something like an understanding could be achieved.

"I think we fussed with each other more than we do now," he said. "There’s the same passion in discussion, but there’s an ethic that spans the conversation. We may not be of like minds, but we like this food. We love to eat well, and we’re going to stay up late and party, but we hope the discussion naturally gravitates toward issues of racial reconciliation."

Originally published in NY Times - October 6, 2004

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

This week’s restaurant:

Bayou, New York