Sylvia Woods, 1926–2012
The cook who brought soul food to Harlem
Much of Harlem’s public life has for five decades revolved around Sylvia Woods’s soul-food restaurant. Sylvia’s began in the 1960s as a gathering place for African-American luminaries such as Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Jesse Jackson Sr. Since then patrons of all races and backgrounds, including tourists from Japan and Germany, have streamed in for her plates of fried chicken, melt-in-your-mouth corn bread, and collard greens. Woods’s only culinary failure was an attempt to offer lower-calorie items in the 1990s. “We had lots of salads and stuff,” she said. “And it went to waste. When people come here, they got in their mind what they want.”
Woods’s rise to the top of the New York dining scene “was all the more remarkable considering that she had never been inside a restaurant before moving to the city in the 1930s,” said The Washington Post. Born in Hemingway, S.C., to a farming couple, she learned to cook from her mother and grandmother, who taught her to roast sweet potatoes using cinders from the chimney. Woods moved to New York as a teenager, eager to escape the prejudice of the South. “I didn’t understand why people would not let me drink out of the same water fountain,” she said, “but they would trust me to cook for them.”
Woods began working as a waitress at Johnson’s Luncheonette in Harlem in the 1950s. She bought the restaurant in 1962 with help from her mother, who mortgaged the family farm, said the New York Daily News. Her first menu included fried chicken, collard greens, and a “poor man’s plate” of pig tails, lima beans, and rice. Those down-home offerings transformed the restaurant into a fixture of the predominantly black neighborhood and earned Woods “the sobriquet the Queen of Soul Food,” said The New York Times. Woods ran the business—which expanded to include a line of bottled sauces, dessert mixes, and cookbooks—until her retirement at age 80. “I have a special table where I can sit and watch everybody when they come in,” she said in 1999. “When they take a spoonful and smile, then I bow my head and think, ‘Yeah, I got it. I got it.’”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Today's political cartoons - May 5, 2024
Cartoons Sunday's cartoons - annoying noises, gag orders, and more
By The Week US Published
-
5 highly educational cartoons about student protests
Cartoons Artists take on apolitical camping, the National Guard, and more
By The Week US Published
-
French schools and the scourge of teenage violence
Talking Point Gabriel Attal announces 'bold' intervention to tackle rise in violent incidents
By The Week UK Published
-
Benjamin Zephaniah: trailblazing writer who 'took poetry everywhere'
Why Everyone's Talking About Remembering the 'radical' wordsmith's 'wit and sense of mischief'
By The Week UK Published
-
Shane MacGowan: the unruly former punk with a literary soul
Why Everyone's Talking About The Pogues frontman died aged 65
By The Week UK Published
-
'Euphoria' star Angus Cloud dies at 25
Speed Read
By Catherine Garcia Published
-
Legendary jazz and pop singer Tony Bennett dies at 96
Speed Read
By Devika Rao Published
-
Martin Amis: literary wunderkind who ‘blazed like a rocket’
feature Famed author, essayist and screenwriter died this week aged 73
By The Week Staff Published
-
Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk legend, is dead at 84
Speed Read
By Peter Weber Published
-
Barry Humphries obituary: cerebral satirist who created Dame Edna Everage
feature Actor and comedian was best known as the monstrous Melbourne housewife and Sir Les Patterson
By The Week Staff Published
-
Mary Quant obituary: pioneering designer who created the 1960s look
feature One of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century remembered as the mother of the miniskirt
By The Week Staff Published