Southern Style Cooking in Harlem Tea Rooms
Courtesy of the New York Public Library
To address the Great Depression US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) launched his Works Progress Administration (WPA). WPA officials hired writers to collect interesting food stories about regional food traditions. We share the content in a paraphrased format when necessary to make them legible and we share direct quotes as often as possible. Here is a short story I found in the New York City municipal archives located in lower Manhattan not far from Wall Street. I did archival research there about 12 years ago. As Syracuse University History Professor emeritus Stephen Saunders Webb told me when I was a doctoral student, when your in the archives, take copies of anything that looks interesting, because you never know when you can use it. The following is a story about tea rooms which apparently had been popular in Harlem during the Great Depression:
One can find Southern style cooking in Harlem tea rooms that cater to both white and black patrons. One such restaurant is owned and operated by woman famous for her fried chicken. Guest visit her kitchen to watch her fry chicken and make candied yams, turnip greens, biscuits, cornbread, black-eyed peas, and pig tails. This chef purchased as much as 400 chickens a day from a nearby kosher butcher shop to meat the demands for her fried chicken.
