1 Restaurant to Go: Sylvia’s Soul Food Expands

The line snakes around the block Sundays for gospel brunch at Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem, as salivating patrons wait patiently to taste spicy barbecued ribs, fluffy corn bread and sweet potato pie.

Behatted mothers fresh from church, their ribbon-haired daughters and fresh-faced sons in tow, queue up with students, laborers, professionals and tourists for hearty helpings of soul food and a thick dose of Southern hospitality.

Sylvia Woods, matriarch of the 34-year-old landmark establishment, hopes the same kind of lines form outside its first satellite, Sylvia’s of Harlem, when its doors open in downtown Atlanta in November.

The Woods family also plans to bring “Sylvia’s World Famous, Talked About, Bar-B-Q Ribs Special” to other U.S. cities over the next few years, including Dallas, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Detroit and Los Angeles. Paris and Tokyo are also under consideration.

“We feel strongly that Sylvia’s will be a destination point,” like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, said Van Woods, Sylvia’s oldest son and president of Sylvia Woods Enterprises.

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Sylvia, a warm grandmother with a wide smile behind designer glasses, is the heartbeat of the beloved eatery. Born on a farm in Hemmingway, S.C., 70 years ago, she came to New York in 1945 with her husband, Herbert, and lied about her experience to get a waitress job at Johnson’s Luncheonette.

She didn’t even know what a coffee urn was and burned herself trying to serve her first customer. But she learned, and 7 1/2 years later, owner Andrew Johnson offered to sell her the restaurant.

“I actually thought the man was crazy! I had no idea about running a business,” she says.

Her mother mortgaged the farm to lend her $20,000. Sylvia, “scared to death,” took charge of the eatery, all eight counter stools and four little tables of it. She began serving Southern-style home cooking under the name “Sylvia’s” in August 1962.

Her husband pitched in, and daughter Bedelia, one of their four children, cleared tables, beginning a family tradition.

The world discovered Sylvia’s in March 1979 when restaurant critic Gael Greene wrote a glowing review in New York magazine.

“The neighborhood, alas, is shabby and forlorn, perhaps a bit forbidding,” Greene said. “But Sylvia’s warm hominess is welcoming.”

Greene waxed lyrical about the breakfast: “It’s an adventure. It’s a lark. The grits are a must. They are impeccable, smooth and full of the nutty hominy flavor.” And the ribs? “Moist and sassy.”

Hordes began descending on the tiny luncheonette. “All these people coming for dinner and all we had was a little counter top!” Sylvia recalls. So she opened a dining room in the nightclub next door.

The rave reviews multiplied, and the New York Times crowned Sylvia, soon one of the city’s most respected restaurateurs, “the Queen of Soul Food.”

As buses began dropping off loads of European and Japanese tourists, the Woods family bought out the rest of the block and created a ragtag collection of rooms. Framed photographs signed by the likes of Spike Lee, Jesse Jackson, Lena Horne, Nelson Mandela and even Elvis crowd the walls.

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Gospel brunch, open microphone nights and live jazz--combined with cheap, finger-lickin’ cooking--have made Sylvia’s a landmark in Harlem, the upper Manhattan neighborhood that is the symbolic heart of black America.

Only at Sylvia’s would Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, courting minority voters, eat breakfast during a brief campaign stop--and the Rev. Al Sharpton hold a lunch meeting the same day.

Van Woods hopes to duplicate that influence in Atlanta when Sylvia’s of Harlem opens in City Plaza Center, a $20-million complex across from City Hall. Woods, a former civil rights activist, has a mantra: “If enough black people can employ their own, it can change our world.” The restaurant should create 60 jobs, he says.

He projects that the $1-million investment will be worth $2.5 million “the minute the doors open,” and quickly bring in $2.5 million to $3 million a year, about what the Harlem restaurant generates.

The Woods family also plans to open a plant in Harlem next year to manufacture a line of Sylvia’s Queen of Soul Food products. It is to be financed by J.P. Morgan Community Development Corp., the Boca Raton, Fla.-based Schatz family and Venture Opportunities, a venture capital firm specializing in minority-owned companies. An earlier manufacturing effort failed because of insufficient capital.

Regynald Washington, president of Georgia’s Restaurant Assn., is leading the transition from neighborhood eatery to nationwide network. He hopes “to maintain the integrity of the Sylvia’s heritage.”

A native New Yorker living in California who came to Sylvia’s for lunch during a recent visit with her father laughed with delight at the prospect of the eatery’s expansion.

“Open Sylvia’s in Oakland!” said Derethia DeVal. Then she ordered peach cobbler to eat on the plane home.