Though the automatic doors of Whole Foods won’t silently swish open until the end of the year at the very earliest, according to spokesman Michael Sinatra, Harlem is already preparing itself for the arrival of the bougie supermarket behemoth.
When the chain opens its eleventh location in New York City, on the corner of 125th and Lenox Avenue, it will serve a Harlem nearly unrecognizable from the days of David Dinkins.
An example: On a frigid Thursday night, on the corner of 115th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Row House — one of the many new restaurants to have opened in the last year — glowed with the warm light of bonhomie.
The restaurant, owned by Camaron Fagan and her husband Gareth and helmed by chef Andrew Welch, serves a New American menu which includes carbonara dumplings ($9) and braised short ribs ($25). By 8 p.m., it is packed.
The Fagans moved to the neighborhood six years ago. They live with their two dogs in an apartment at 126th and Lenox Avenue, a block away from the supermarket-to-be. “Personally,” she said, “I’m looking forward to the Whole Foods. It shows how the neighborhood is transforming.” The Fagans, who also own Harlem Tavern, has seen the change first hand.
“When we first arrived here, we decided to open Harlem Tavern because there was nowhere to get a good beer and relax,” she said. “People would be wandering around thirsty. Nowadays, with the way the neighborhood has changed, we decided we wanted to do something a little more refined.”
In the corridor stretching from Frederick Douglass to Lenox and from roughly 116th to 125th streets, there are scores of restaurateurs with the same idea: to cater to the new Harlemite.
On 118th and Lenox, long-time Harlem restaurateur Brian Washington Palmer reskinned his restaurant Bodega 47 into an upscale Mission-style mexican place called Sexy Taco Dirty Cash. On 124th and Lenox, Anita Trehan opened the two-story Indian tea house, Chaiwali. Two blocks north, husband-and-wife team Christy Phansond and Andrew LoPresto recently opened Babbalucci, a wood-fired pizza restaurant.
Bistros like BLVD Bistro on Malcolm X Boulevard, Maison Harlem on 127th and St. Nicholas and Flat Top on Amsterdam and 121st have transformed Harlem’s Hausmannian avenues into the 21st arrondisement, catering to a much different clientele than the (delicious) hole-in-the-wall Francophone Senegalese restaurants of 116th Street.
The demographics of Harlem are changing rapidly. According to WNYC, the median income of central Harlem has jumped 6.7 percent from 2007-2009 to 2010-2012, the highest increase in the city. And according to the Center for Urban Research at CUNY, though the population of central Harlem grew from 109,095 in 2000 to 118,665 in 2010, nearly 10,000 black residents left. As the neighborhood landscape shifts, culinary offerings have seen an equally seismic transformation.
The scene, once dominated by matriarchs like Amy Ruth of Amy Ruth’s and Sylvia Woods of the iconic Sylvia’s, gave way to slick restaurateurs who repackaged soul food classics, tripled their price and sold them to visitors hungry for a taste of “authentic” Harlem.
But the wave of restaurants that has opened since Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster — with the notable exception of the burger shop Harlem Shake — are less brazenly about Harlem. They are simply good restaurants located there. And many strive for the affordability that would mark a true neighborhood spot.
“We spent a lot of time on price point,” said Christy Phansond of Babbalucci, who lives with her husband and two children at 130th and Lenox. “We wanted to offer good product at a modest price. We live here, so we know what the neighborhood can sustain.”
In addition to offering $12 pies, Phansond also partners with Harlem Grown, a local urban farming initiative, to provide neighborhood-grown produce. For Phansond, the arrival of Whole Foods is a mixed blessing. “It’ll definitely change the neighborhood,” she said. “But I’m not sure it’ll help it.”
Phansond, like many residents, is happy about the increased traffic a posh supermarket will bring to the neighborhood, but dreads the so-called “Whole Foods effect,” whereby rents and property values in the immediate vicinity of a Whole Foods dramatically increase.
That, on the other hand, is exactly what gets Rachel Medalie, a real estate developer with Elliman, so excited. Ms. Medalie, currently selling three adjacent condo buildings on West 126th street, said, “I always include the arrival of Whole Foods in my three-minute pitch — it’s a big draw.”
Medalie says the real estate market is insatiable. “I’ve never seen so many people walking through the door,” she said. Not only do these new Harlemites pay at or above asking price, according to Ms. Medalie, but these “thirty-somethings, who are working and can afford to eat well and are into their health, are good for the neighborhood.”
Nikoa Evans-Hendricks, who runs Harlem Park-to-Park, an association of neighborhood small businesses built to “withstand the corporate development that is happening in Harlem,” greets the economic development with equal parts hope and wariness.
“You can not stop the machine,” she said, “but you can help steer the ship.’ For the last five years Evans-Hendricks has been working with Whole Foods on a variety of neighborhood programs like the Harlem Harvest Festival, which features local food artisans and the Harlem Bake-Off. Nevertheless, she said, “We are all bracing ourselves for the rental prices, which is going to flow from the Whole Foods effect.”
Evans-Hendricks also pointed to the people the restaurant boom left behind. Though she welcomes the arrival of upscale dining options in her neighborhood, Evans-Hendricks also bemoaned the economic bifurcation: “Now that we’ve re-defined the image of our cuisine, we need to address the huge void of affordable dining options.”
But according to Alexander Smalls, the restaurateur behind The Cecil and Minton’s, two of Harlem’s most exciting restaurants, Harlemites have an appetite for the finer things. “When they opened the Starbucks on 125th, they said no black person was going to pay that much for a cup of coffee,” Smalls said. “Now it’s one of the biggest in the city. Holding a Starbucks cup in your hand is a signal that you are living the dream. Soon, the Whole Foods bag will be the same.”
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