This is what Harlem is really like... let's explore with a local

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

hi hello how's it going my name is elena and welcome to my channel i love to travel and i obviously can't exactly travel abroad at the moment so i've created a little series on my channel called beyond your block to travel the world throughout new york city made up of its famed five boroughs the new york city is extraordinary diverse by nearly every measure it has the largest foreign population of any metropolis it's home to more than 800 languages and has no ethnic majority and like anywhere the city is defined by its residents above all else it's out of my deep-seated love for this town that i'm teaming up with locals from all over new york city to share with you their unique experience from the angle of the neighborhoods they call home while places like midtown and soho and washington square park aren't going anywhere there are countless neighborhoods that you're less likely to find in your tour guide book that are vastly underappreciated i'm excited to welcome those guides to my channel to share with you the new york they'd like you to know i was born in paris and as a small child i was constantly traveling to different countries and being exposed to various cultures and people my mom is iranian-american whose family had to flee when she was a child because of the iranian revolution they immigrated to the us with several suitcases and worked incredibly hard to build a life from scratch while i've been very privileged to be white passing and to hold an american passport i feel that my mixed heritage has shaped the way i see the world i know from personal experience that there's so much richness to experience when exposed to cultures different than your own so i am so excited to be able to bring a little bit of that to you all so as i was researching and planning where i wanted to do this next episode i thought back when i ate at this restaurant on the edge of central park called taranga and when i was there i met one of the co-founders full of sade and we got to talking and i learned more about her story about the mission of the restaurant and then we stayed in touch over social media and i was like hey i'm doing this series i'd love to pass the mic off to you to share more about your neighborhood and what you love about it and what more people should know so we're going to be heading to east harlem to meet her at taranga but before we do that i want to tell you a little bit of history on this area harlem is incredibly diverse with very rich history and culture while many african americans came to harlem during the great migration in the early 1900s there were many west african immigrants who found their way to harlem about three decades ago to find work affordable housing and a better life composed of immigrants from countries like senegal ghana burkina faso ivory coast and more harlem has a very vibrant center for fashion food commerce etc where you can really find and experience that authentic african culture without having to leave the city like i said harlem is extremely diverse and today we'll be focusing on that west african community that you can find in east and central harlem on that note let's head to taranga and go meet full ashade we are here at taranga in east harlem we are a west african fast casual so there are two ways to ordering at taranga it all depends if you're going vegan or you're going with meat the one thing that's special about taranga is that we have vegan options because a lot of west african and african food in general is always cooked with meat i'm feeling a little bit more on the vegan side today so i always recommend the jollof rice jello fries is a west african staple you can find throughout all most countries in west africa so we have a few in-house juices that we make we have a moringa limeade a hibiscus juice and then we have buoy which i don't even know how to explain it you have to taste it for yourself but it comes from the baobab tree okay have you seen a baby option before they're the most like luxurious trees ever i'm gonna try to be one they're like so it's hard to explain what the taste is but it's very delicious what would you like i feel like i gotta try this the bowie yeah awesome i gotta give it a go awesome awesome so curious now cool we'll do that amazing hello hello we got our meals and we started digging in a little bit because i couldn't resist but we wanted to chat a little bit more about what we're eating talk about taronga while you are eating our yasayasa bowl with yasa is the caramelized onions you're also eating the in dambe stew and then you got kelawele which is spicy roasted plantains and that is from ghana the yasa sauce is from senegal and then you also have the condiment right here called roth and in senegal they use that to stuff chicken and fish with but we really like it as a condiment to add extra flavor to your bowl what i'm eating is the black-eyed pea salad i'm also having the kelawele and then i'm having kasama salad kasumas is a region in senegal which it's a place where like it's very full of fruits and vegetables and lush green so our salad represents that and we also have a grain mixed in there californio and fono is an ancient grain that has so many amazing properties not only for the farmer but for the climate as well because it's a drought resistant crop well our mission statement is sharing culture through food not only are we sharing our culture with people who are not african we're also sharing african cultures with other africans a lot of people don't realize that through the trans-atlantic slave trade a lot of our foods were passed on to different countries there's been so many takes on african food according to where people live and a lot of that has to do with our ancestors so it's very important for us to highlight that and then another part of our mission is to like make sure that african food has proper representation especially at the international food table and even just how we source our ingredients either that's going to our local african spot what's seasonal how we can support our farmers and stay loyal to them it's a global economic thing that we're trying to do here all right let's eat yeah i'm staring at my food i know i'm like i'm hungry oh how do you like the buoy it's so good yeah how do you explain what this is okay so first time trying this kind of like almost like a dessert shake and it's thick as thick as like a smoothie or a milkshake but like almost it's a little bit it's in between yeah it's made with coconut milk so it's dairy free and the baabat fruit is super high in potassium big fan great if you have a sweet tooth like myself pleasantly surprised hello we just walked a few streets over from taranga and we are now at our second stop this is the malcolm chavez harlem market also known as the african market the malcolm shabazz market in harlem is full of fabulous traditional african crafts and textiles you can find standouts there like hair braiding boutiques there's large selection of carved wood and figurines as well as handmade african style clothes for men women and children all of this mostly i want to succeed it's called like little senegal even if you go outside of 115 you'll find pockets of like settlements restaurants halal spots because um most of these people are muslim yeah okay so i think we're oh this is good this is it we are at our third spot yes so we are at accra accra is another african staple here in harlem aqua is the capital city of ghana today we're at the restaurant because we are getting poo poo we're going to go back to my place to eat this because the thing is with any type of food it's meant to be eaten with your hands and that's how you like really enjoy it yeah so i want to say wash your hands be comfortable and eat this and enjoy it the way it's supposed to be perfect i quickly wanted to like highlight one of my favorite spots in harlem it is the schomburg center as part of the new york city public libraries they have like one of the biggest collections of black historical contexts so the schomburg center for research and black culture in harlem is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research preservation exhibition of materials focused on african diaspora and african experiences oh cool all right so we have this thing this type of poo poo called ebba ebba is made out of gary and gary is fermented cassava so it's a root vegetable that's fermented and then we have eggplant stew which is very like famous within um nigeria and ghana and it's made out of pumpkin seeds yeah so we're doing it meatless today how to eat fufu is with your hands i'm ready it's so enjoyable if you were to ever go to like nigeria or ghana and have food and eat with a fork or a spoon people looking at you like yeah i enjoy this so you use your right hand to eat that's a sign of respect too and it's just a sign of like cleanliness and you take it so you take a little pee up you roll it up and then you dip inside the stew and you get as much as that as possible and then more looks so good it has like a little bit of a kick to it just barely and it's i feel like it's super homey mm-hmm like on a rainy day it's like love it'd be interesting to hear too just more from you about like i think maybe this was off camera we're kind of just talking about just the different like west african and also east african yeah communities in hong kong yeah in harlem and kind of like what's present here anything on that i think people would love to learn you will literally find francophone west africa so one of the countries that were colonized by the french so you'll find burkina faso mali ivory coast senegal and then you'll also find um ghanaians and nigerians here but another thing too is that there's always been like this thing where can like africans and black people get along i look at african americans as like my cousins i call them cousins because i think for a lot of people if they can chase back their dna will take them back to west africa you know so i'm just like even though i don't know you in that sense you might have been sold from my family i look at african-american rights and issues as my issues being an african and being someone that lived out here for a very long time i do love harlem for that there's a good mixture of all kinds of black culture here was there like a community feeling amongst people like it's not kind of like you're saying i also want to introduce with tarina other people to like other african cuisines than just their own i think one thing about africans we are very much we are very tribal people so we stick to what we know i think that's what makes toronto very special for africans because it allows us to step outside of our comfort zone in one bowl like in one bowl you will only be in liberia ghana senegal and nigeria you know travel the world yeah exactly i'd love to hear too a little bit more about the things that you're passionate about like how you got to new york city i mean my story is full of like diversity i was born in nigeria yeah i lived in canada then me and my family moved to staten island my first real job out of college was starbucks and then the restaurant happened we were looking for locations and everything the location africa center happened and it all just made sense like wow this is what my like purpose led me up to the um restaurant is a collaborative thing right there's a few other partners but i also have like my own vision for my own thing yeah i'm enjoying myself yeah it's already dirty there's another one i'm like powering through this it's so good like once you start your pants still takes practice like you see like for me i know and you're like just through the whole video just had a lovely time at your beautiful apartment thank you thank you for hosting me and now are we headed we're heading to an ethiopian restaurant just to get a quick little snack and then head over to one of my favorite spots in harlem and i'm very full but let's go i really wanted to show you all drivers road really quickly it was once owned by a lot of like black intellects think like you're james baldwins of the world and especially during the harlem renaissance a lot of them lived in this neighborhood thank you and my little hat yeah so for the last spot we're heading to have a little picnic in the newly named james baldwin lawn thanks to a city-wide initiative to honor the black experience the james baldwin lawn honors the american novelist playwright sas poet and activist all right we're at our final stop we're getting a lot of food we're eating sambosas which you know sounds like samosas um this is from my favorite ethiopian while we're eating our sambusas sambosas i just have like one or two final questions you can share about any of like the local initiatives my one of my favorite organizations nonprofits and community gardens called harlem grown is out here in harlem one of the most amazing things about harlem grown is that they inspire the local youth through urban farming all family like oriented and it was just a very beautiful place and for me it was like one of my first and then we did speak about the schomburg definitely check out some of the talks and initiatives there i feel like when i walk down harlem i feel a lot of like that rich history of black intelligence black excellence and i want people to like uphold and uplift that you know there is gentrification happening here happening in harlem but at the same time there are a lot of like black owned neighborhoods so if you want to like support locally like black owned businesses harlem is a great place to explore take a trip a train two three train b train this match out here come up and visit it's a wrap we did it yeah you