Sylvia Woods

Sylvia Woods opened Sylvia's Restaurant on Lenox Avenue in Harlem in 1962 with a 35-seat luncheonette. Over the next sixty years she built it into the institution that fed the neighborhood, the city, four generations of Harlem families, presidents, civil rights leaders, and tourists from every continent. She was named the Queen of Soul Food and earned it.

Her work is the model of the Black-owned, family-run, neighborhood restaurant as a civic institution — feeding people, employing people, anchoring a block, and keeping a cuisine in continuous public practice. Her cookbooks (Sylvia's Soul Food, Sylvia's Family Soul Food Cookbook) are among the most widely cooked Black American cookbooks of the late 20th century.