With New Harlem, Comes New Food

Harlem's Food Scene Gets Cookin'

By Joseph Tepper

Harlem ain’t just about soul food anymore. Just ask Jackie Orange.

Since 2008, Orange has led hundreds of food junkies on her “Taste Harlem” tour through the nabe’s top eateries. From classic soul food joints like Sylvia’s to the last Italian joints in East Harlem, Orange makes sure her clients get their fill of Harlem cuisine.

Lately, the lifelong Harlemite has noticed a dramatic increase in food startups in the changing community. Daring food entrepreneurs are trying their hand at meeting an increasing need for a more diverse Harlem menu. While Sylvia’s will always be on her tour, Orange has a lot more options to choose from than just a few years ago.

“Let me tell you, when I started my food tour I didn’t have a lot of options,” says Orange. “In the past, Harlem didn’t have diverse food options.”

The tour leader believes that Harlem’s food boom is an integral part of improving the Harlem community. The neighborhood’s “Restaurant Row” on Frederick Douglass Blvd. is bringing in customers from the community and even from the rest of the city. “Now we’re keeping money and keeping people in the community so they don’t have to go downtown.”

Orange points towards Hurricane Sandy for proof of Harlem’s emergence as a restaurant destination. When the Hurricane shut down many of the more upscale restaurants of lower Manhattan for a week, downtown residents flocked to Harlem’s new restaurants like “Five and Diamond” and “Chocolat.”

But Orange notes another disturbing trend in the Harlem food scene—as soon as one place opens, another seems to close. “Many of these restaurant’s can’t survive—the rent just took them out.” She points to the closing of MoBay uptown, which faced tripled rent and bankruptcy. The average price for retail restaurant space has increased from $50 to $175 per square foot in the last two years. “How are they supposed to survive with these rents?”

Orange sees food entrepreneurship in Harlem as a way to save their identity from over-commercialization. “These landlords want Bed Bath and Beyond, Red Lobster, and things that take away from the neighborhood.”

Without a vibrant food start-up scene, Orange fears that “soon Harlem will look like middle America.”