Is Sylvia's in Harlem a TOURIST TRAP Now? Iconic SOUL FOOD Review

hey guys and welcome to another episode of UAE eats I'm UA and today we're at one of the most famous restaurants in all of New York City whereas Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem a soul food restaurant that's been around since the 60s named after its founder Sylvia woods now out of all the soul food restaurants that have came and went in Harlem and are still around Silvio's is hands down the most famous it's been regarded for a while as hands down the most iconic and hands down the best of the soul food restaurants in Harlem so iconic That Celebrity stopped by at Sylvia's all the time when they're passing through New York or Harlem people as notable as Obama and though Clinton to Kevin Hart to Will Smith you name it African-American celebrities and celebrities in general have all been to this restaurant it's also located in a really great spot in the bustling 125th Street a really Lively really fun spot in New York City now I said all that great stuff about Sylvia's and it's regarded as the most iconic soul food restaurant in New York but lately there's kind of been some mixed opinions about this place Sylvia it's passed away about 10 years ago and ever since Sylvia passed away the restaurant has been passed down to her kids and her grandkids some people think that the quality has kind of slipped since Sylvia's passed away and now it's mostly writing off its reputation we're gonna give this place a fair shot we came all the way up here from New Jersey to Harlem to give this place a fair shot we ate at Amy Roots a few videos ago and we thought it was great let's see if sylvius lives up to the name or if the naysayers are right anyways let's look at the menu now taking a look at the menu uh their menu is relatively simple it's not like a book it's just a printed sheet of paper but it's a nice looking one you know a really nice logo nice color so it still gives me Good Vibes now they have all sorts of really nice uh soul food options everything looks pretty good some of the prices are not too cheap it looks like this is 28 bucks 26 bucks so uh it's not the cheapest thing out there but it is New York City Harlem has gentrified a lot uh when I made my video on Amy roofs I know a lot of people criticize is saying that the prices were way too high for the kind of food we were getting but you kind of have to keep in mind that there's been inflation there's been a lot of gentrification and a lot of soul food restaurants have kind of died out so it kind of just comes with the territory even a hole in the wall so good places are charging these prices now I hear out of all these items I hear mac and cheese is great I hear collard greens is great as well cornbread is always a must when it comes to soul food so I definitely want to get the cornbread and it's only two bucks and yeah you know fried chicken I hear is great as well and I hear Fried Chicken here is supposed to be really good and the barbecue ribs are supposed to be good after all they're a self-proclaimed world famous I gotta say though you know the earlier prices were a little bit high but uh this lunch special doesn't look bad 14 bucks you get a side and an entree kind of like I mentioned prices have gone up really high in New York even in neighborhoods like Harlem so yeah that's actually a pretty good lunch special so let's see if we can get that why don't we uh the fried chicken like is that like a big flag let me try one of the cornbreads yeah I'm gonna grab some breakfast oh thank you do you have any sort of lunch special for the barbecue ribs okay okay I'll try that on the side you know we do have like a regular chicken combination oh you do you want to do that yeah right on the back you can do Fried Chicken you can still do your leg and thigh and then includes that includes two sides yeah oh you'll see more doing it that way oh that's that's perfect so you want to do ribbon chicken um yeah and then you can also do the mac and cheese I'll do collard greens so that'll save you more so yeah I like it what you think can I hold on to this yeah perfect all right so I'll be right back thank you okay so I really barely waited anytime at all so the cornbread is here I hear the cornbread at Sylvia's is supposed to be good at any soul food restaurant really the cornbread looks really interesting it kind of almost resembles Muffins with a bit of a smaller muffin top or really more like the whole cornbread is like a big Muffin Top now at Amy roofs the cornbread look a lot more homemade and a little bit more crumbly I will say this one looks a little bit harder a little bit more compact but we're gonna give it a fair Shake we're gonna give it a fair try so let's give it a try oh actually it doesn't look like it but it's warm it's like piping hot from the oven hmm oh wow you know what I said earlier was spot on it's more like a corn muffin than most cornbreads I've had but I gotta say if this is like a corn muffin this is one of the best corn muffins I've had it really like is eating like a small muffin that's only a muffin top just like the Seinfeld episode I was not impressed by the way the cornbread looked when I got it but it tastes really good you'll really see real pieces of cornmeal inside it giving it nice moistness nice crunch good freshly baked flavor that's awesome and he gave it to me for free you know I was prepared to say that it probably didn't need it because it already tastes fresh cornmealy buttery almost a little bit crunchy with the formula inside it but that butter kind of takes it to like a whole nother level somehow like it feels like too much of a good thing and like it just almost doesn't hit that point like the cornmeal texture really works perfectly and the butteriness of the butter combines perfectly with The Buttery texture of the cornbread hmm amazing once again just look at the inside of that cornbread and just tell me it's not going to taste good honestly guys this is only 2 letters they give it to me for free but I highly recommend getting this cornbread it's worth every two of those dollars trust me but enough chit chat about bread because the service here is really fast we barely just finished talking about the bread and the main course just arrived and I even got like two main courses I got a fried chicken leg and I got some ribs and two sides I think in total I might have waited like maybe not even 15 minutes everything came really really fast well let me show you what we got just take a look at this heaping plate of soul food in front of us it was about 26 bucks not cheap but for the quantity of the food that we got I gotta say it's um it's not really that unreasonable you know we got two proteins and we got two sides 26 bucks I mean this might be able to feed two people so 13 bucks each it's not bad if you ask me now I heard from Word of Mouth that the ribs are really good the fried chicken is supposed to be good as well and the server also recommended these to me so word of mouth and word of server both seem to connect collard green seems good too and if I'm eating all this heavy food I gotta have some veggies and the mac and cheese oh that looks like a solid baked mac and cheese and it looks kind of well seasoned never thought I would say that about mac and cheese well seasoned but I guess it's a thing now luckily it's pretty warm out so you know this heaping plate of food is not really getting any cooler like it would during the winter time or the fall but that being said let's not let this sit for too long we want the chicken to stay crisp and we want everything to not get cold so let's just dig in now obviously looks aren't everything but just looking at it I mean the food looks great people are saying that the quality has kind of went down ever since Sylvia passed away but at least the appearance of the food looks good to me okay let's dig into the Sylvia's Fried Chicken well actually you kind of hear the breading punching just from ripping it apart [Applause] [Music] hmm well that's that's really good very very delicious what I always find impressive about when people do Fried Chicken well is when they're able to keep the chicken moist on the inside and not have it dry out that really really speaks to a good temperature control really really good experience with the fryer and also marinating the chicken well beforehand in something like buttermilk I'm not sure if my camera will pick it up properly and you're just gonna have to take my word for it it's not dry or stringy at all this chicken is moist just look at it just look at it it's moist it's not dry it's not stringy mmm moist chicken fried outside guaranteed good time thank you and the breading too the breading has nice flavor I can't really pinpoint exactly what they're using in the breading some sort of special spice mix no doubt it tastes really really good it kind of reminds me of KFC in a way and I do not mean that as an insult because I know KFC seems like a fast food restaurant and it has a bad reputation what I mean by that is it tastes like what KFC should taste like like it's KFC on steroids almost like the flavor that the kernel probably originally wanted before the corporation watered down his recipes my only complaint is the skin is a little bit salty uh just a tad a little bit on the salty end that might be because I kind of detect some MSG in the spice mix there's nothing wrong with MSG other than it being really salty it's more or less safe they might have overdone it a little bit with sodium or MSG but it's still tasty minor complaining hmm very good a little salty but it's soul food you kind of have to expect it a little bit if they just dial back the salt a little bit it won't be perfect but it's still pretty good right now it's not bad enough where I'm Really Gonna complain about it now no matter how good fried chicken is hot sauce often will take it to the next level so let's add a little bit of this Sylvia's triple strength hot sauce now I usually like to put Louisiana hot sauce whenever I eat fried chicken so let's see how the Sylvia's hot sauce is whoa oh wow oh honestly forget Louisiana hot sauce this hot sauce so much better so much stronger vinegar flavor but not overpowering and even though it says triple strength it's really not that hot if you don't really have spice tolerance then you should avoid it but if you have any spice tolerance at all I highly recommend using it it definitely makes the chicken better even though it tastes good on its own it definitely makes it much better and it kind of masks the slightly over saltiness of the chicken it amplifies what's good about the chicken and it hides the saltiness the chicken's all gone and I gotta say it was awesome let's now turn our attention to the ribs the self-proclaimed world famous barbecue ribs hmm I may have forgotten about commentary but is there any better commentary than this the rib is all gone except for the tiny bone in the middle that will say more than anything I could have said did I get any on my face hmm I think the key is the ribs are they're not exactly fall off the bone ribs like I've had some Texas barbecue where the meat almost like melts off of it like you put your teeth on it and the whole thing just falls off the bone but they're still really really tender like let me show you like you need to apply some Force they're not fall off the bone soft but they're like I don't know like gently pry off the bone soft is that something people say probably not these ribs are really really good guys they're really tender the sauce on them is key it's got like a nice tomato flavor not too sweet not too ketchupy like sometimes when you get like tomato based barbecue sauces they end up tasting like ketchup this sauce almost tastes like it almost tastes more like fresh tomato I am sure they're not using fresh tomatoes for this and Sylvia's if you watch this video please let me know in the comments if I'm wrong I'm sure they're using some sort of canned tomato sauce or something but it tastes great but whatever they're doing it's amplifying that natural tomato flavor not something I would expect from a barbecue sauce and I think their proportions are perfect like it's not too much sugar not too much molasses it's sweet but not overpowering and even though it's usually not touched much by the sauce I actually really like eating this fatty membrane on the back of the rib hmm oh it's just so delicious I can't stop eating it I feel like it's like triggering my inner caveman hmm clean bum do I need more commentary than that no I just completely cleaned house on those pork ribs so delicious not quite full of the bone but tender great tomato based sauce they were just excellent uh well there's only one problem now I zeroed in on the two proteins I ate the chicken I ate the ribs but uh I'm getting kind of full now you know maybe getting the 26 dollar Mega dinner plate was not the right move we still have two sides left the mac and cheese and the collard greens and honestly I may be at like 80 90 uh I don't think I could finish both of these sides completely on my own but for you guys I'm gonna try I'm gonna at least take one bite from each just so I can evaluate their taste so let's give it a shot try the collard greens the server and Google review said this was pretty good thank you very solid colored greens the collard greens are really welcome after I just ate a plate of fried chicken and pork ribs a nice vegetable break although I'm not quite sure how much of a vegetable break this is like I don't know if you've ever had some soul food items like pork flavored broccoli I think this is a piece of pork a few pieces of pork I think are in this to really flavor the collard greens but imagine that if they're cooking it with all that pork that pork fat is gonna go into the vegetables and it's probably gonna offset some of the nutritional value of the collard greens but and isn't that what life is all about but all joking aside those collard greens are great they cook it with some like Smoky Pork meat and it makes all the greens taste Smoky and Porky so you're eating vegetables but it doesn't really feel like a chore really good who would have guessed that the way to make people eat vegetables is to throw pork inside it well I feel like I would have been able to guess that but they guessed it first okay guys and lastly it has not been touched this whole meal I hope it hasn't become too dry and too cold and solidified but let's try the mac and cheese wow that mac and cheese is really congealed hasn't it cheese to end [Applause] I will be honest I will say that the mac and cheese is a little dry I know it's been sitting for a while so it's probably gotten dry and it's really congealed I'm sure if I ate it fresh it would probably be less dry that being said I think by Nature it's just kind of dry like I think if it were a bit more wet you would be able to detect the sauce within it but I think it's just kind of the way it's made it might just be the style it is very likely just the style but um it's not for me personally I prefer a more wet mac and cheese a more stringy gooey Saucy mac and cheese maybe you'll like that maybe this is just like the way some people do it but it's not really for me personally to me this tastes more like a Cheesy Italian pasta than a real mac and cheese but um anyways guys I think that's gonna be it for this video we came up here to Sylvia's with very temperate expectations we've heard a lot of things about silvios some people said that it was still really good other people said that it kind of fell off including some news outlets the New York Post especially said that it really the climbing quality ever since Sylvia passed away but I gotta say at least not for me maybe I just came on a good day maybe I just got lucky it's always possible that some places are inconsistent but I gotta say at least for me besides the mac and cheese everything here knocked it out of the park for me the cornbread was really unique really freshly baked one of the most unique cornmeal things I've ever eaten the Fried Chicken had great seasoning it was fried perfectly it was crunchy on the outside juicy on the inside excellent the pork ribs that barbecue sauce was amazing they were tender they were juicy and just look at The Clean Plate do I need to say more and the colored greens not too salty sometimes collard greens can be too salty I found but these collard greens not too salty I love the pork infused flavor it was excellent mac and cheese is a hard pass but hey maybe that's just me oh and one more thing I gotta see if I can buy this hot sauce way better than Louisiana hot sauce anyways guys I think that's gonna be it for this video thank you so much for coming with me as we came here to Sylvia's to find out if Sylvia's is still iconic or if it's kind of fallen off and yeah you know my answer at this point it was great but of course this is just my experience what do you think have you been to sobias before let me know in the comments and also let me know what your favorite soul food place in Harlem is let me know in the comments because great minds eat a like if you like my videos make sure you like And subscribe that way you stay up to date whenever I post another video until next time I'll see you later foreign

Channel: UA Eats

Views: 142,708

Keywords: Sylvia's, Sylvia's Restaurant, Sylvia's Harlem, Sylvia's Restaurant Harlem, Sylvia's Review, Sylvia's Overrated, Sylvia's fried chicken, Sylvia's BBQ ribs, Sylvia's barbecue ribs, Sylvia's tourist trap, harlem soul food, harlem best soul food, amy ruth's, melba's, red rooster, best soul food in harlem, soul food fried chicken, soul food mac n cheese, soul food ribs, soul food bbq ribs, soul food collard greens, soul food mukbang, harlem food tour, harlem food review, harlem

Id: z6fc8UCB6Ls

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023