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The soul food By Chandrabhan Prasad Arguably, New York is a museum of world cultures where people from all over the world can be seen exploring their dreams. New York also mirrors the American strength in embracing all cultures. Manhattan is a playground of American splendour. Within it lie two extremes, the Times Square, the living ecstasy on Earth, and Harlem, the Black locality. Harlem shows how ugly America's race-relations have been. There used to be a night club called Cotton Club where leading Black artists performed, but often, Black customers would not be allowed to enter. Such has been the appalling inheritance of America. Historically associated with poverty, crime and Black habitat, Harlem has been a laboratory of Black cultural renaissance. Rising from the deadweight of racism, the Black geniuses found expression in Harlem and morally pulverised the White arrogance. The Sylvia restaurant in Harlem or just Sylvia's, is a book of Black beauty and resolve and Whites' reluctant goodbye to desegregation. There was no way, thus, that I would miss visiting Sylvia's. I took time off from my university assignment and landed at the doorstep of my friend who lives in Manhattan. He took me to what is popularly known as "Sylvia's Soul Food". The restaurant has been visited by the world's best known faces like Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and Magic Johnson, legendary basketball player. It has also been visited by soap opera deity Susan Victoria Lucci of All My Children fame and Academy Award winning actress Liza Minnelli of the Cabaret fame. Irrespective of their colour, people visiting New York make it a point to have at least one meal at Sylvia's. With a seating capacity of 450 people, over 4,000 customers visit Sylvia's every week. She opened the restaurant in 1962. The restaurant is owned and run by a Black. Looking back at her past, Sylvia is a goddess of inspiration. Born in February 2, 1926, her father died three days after her birth. Her grandfather was hanged wrongly on the charge of a grocery store robbery. Raised by her mother, Sylvia has seen both poverty and discrimination. Picking green beans, she worked at a farm to add to the family's income. "I didn't understand why people would not let me drink out of the same water fountain, but they would trust me to cook for them and to take care of their dearest things, their babies," Sylvia recalls in one of her interviews. She trained to become a beautician but became a waitress instead in New York. With a loan from her mother, she opened Sylvia's. The rest is history. Sylvia's Family Soul Food cookbook is as popular among the Blacks as among the Whites. She has now diversified into a host of beauty products. I consider myself lucky to have met Sylvia Woods, now 81, in person. A goddess of humility, she reminded me of the contributions made by her late husband Herbert Woods, and mother Julia. The elegant Van Woods now leads the revolution unleashed by Sylvia. "Ours is delicacy of America's south", says her charming daughter Bedelia. In other words, Sylvia's is not about Black food. "Of course there is an interest in the way Blacks cook their food", said a White customer after much prodding. After spending hours around the restaurant, I can feel that in the unstated White conscience, Sylvia's food is also about the Black flavour. My question now to all Indians is - what if a Dalit opened a restaurant in New Delhi? Will the caste-Hindus flock to a Dalit restaurant the way White's do to Sylvia's?
