- Hey, I'm Tren'ness Woods-Black,
I'm third generation Sylvia's Restaurant,
where I serve as the VP of communications.
Sylvia's definitely is, is Harlem.
My grandmother would often say, you know, I am Harlem,
but they just call me Sylvia
and that really began to resonate with my family.
- My name is Marcus Woods.
I work at Sylvia's Restaurant, I'm the head chef there.
It's a family business and I've been in there my whole life.
- Thanks brother.
- [Marcus] My grandmother's story
is a story of perseverance,
it's a story of, you know, moving from the deep South
and coming to the big city of New York and making it happen.
- [Tren'ness] For about 16 years,
my grandmother worked at Johnson's Luncheonette in Harlem
and during that time, she became everyone's favorite,
so when Mr. Johnson had another business opportunity,
he immediately thought that
the perfect owner would be my grandmother.
- She asked her mother to take out a mortgage on her farm
in order to purchase this, this luncheonette.
- On August 1st, 1962, Sylvia's Restaurant was born
and from then on, you know,
my grandmother was known as the queen of soul food.
The queen of soul food just stuck.
Walk into the green room and you see our queen,
Winnie Mandela, with my grandmother.
One of her most proudest moments
was cooking for the Mandela's.
- I feel like soul food
is honestly just food that comes from the heart.
It could be any type of cuisine,
but it's just the idea of that home cooked meal
that your mom or your grandmother or something made for you.
I feel like that's really what makes soul food,
so we just cook our version of soul food,
but everybody can make soul food.
- Soul food for me, is the food of my ancestors.
Techniques and ingredients that go back to,
to Africa, you know?
They go back to that soil
and it's, it's the food that
we started preparing as enslaved people
and once we were freed, we kept a lot of those items.
- [Marcus] Food to me is like, it's like music.
It's, it's just one of those things that
naturally makes people feel something if it's done right.
If you put love into it, people feel it.
I believe it's therapeutic.
- [Tren'ness] COVID came in
and it really, really decimated our community
and the one thing that I am so thankful for about Harlem
is that the community, the Harlemites,
we've all just stuck together.
- [Marcus] Harlem is a special neighborhood.
People like to call it a village,
but I guess it goes into that sense of
it takes a village to raise a, raise a child
and Harlem is like one of those neighborhoods,
especially growing up,
everybody always was just looking out for somebody,
everybody knew each other.
- Say cheese.
- Cheese.
- All right, I love you guys.
- People should support small businesses
because at the end of the day,
these are the businesses
that make up neighborhoods, you know?
These are the people that live in the neighborhood,
usually running these small businesses
and it's just important to take care of your neighborhood
because your neighborhood will take care of you.
- When we were approached
about the opportunity to partner with Thrillist
to provide food to an area that we can't reach,
it was so, so like, oh my gosh,
this is exactly what we needed.
- The only challenge that it is for me
is trying to make sure for this Ghost Kitchen
that we give the people our best.
- [Tren'ness] We just want to make sure that
everyone is able to experience Sylvia's and hopefully,
that experience will will grant them some sense of normalcy.
- I know that when people try it, they love it,
so I want everybody to try it.
It's, that, that's the goal.
- This is sacred, sacred area.
A lot of people have sat here,
President Barack Obama, to Kamala Harris,
to Pete Buttigieg, to the Kennedy's.
Everyone that you can think of,
every kind of A-list celebrity,
but there's no better celebrity than our Harlemites.
We love our Harlemites.
- [Marcus] If my grandmother would walk into the restaurant,
she would be so proud and just happy that, you know,
everything is just still going
and after she let us know how proud she was,
she would let us know what work needs to be done
because there's always work that needs to be done with her.
- [Tren'ness] We know that the sun will come back out,
you know, and we'll get through this
and we're going to get through it together
because we're going to continue to give
and we're going to continue to show up
and keep that marquee lit for Harlem.