Sylvia's

Sylvia Woods opened her luncheonette on Lenox Avenue in 1962, and more than sixty years later her family still runs the dining rooms that grew around it. This is the restaurant people mean when they say Harlem soul food: smothered chicken, oxtails, candied yams, and cornbread that arrives warm, served under photographs of the presidents, musicians, and neighbors who have eaten here.

The room works for almost any occasion — a long Sunday gospel brunch, a weeknight dinner after walking 125th Street, a table of out-of-town family you want to impress without fuss. Tour buses find it, and the kitchen does not seem to mind; the food is cooked for regulars, and it shows.