Harlem couple offers low-cost, home-cooked meals for local residents
A Harlem couple is offering the best deal in town: home-cooked meals for as little as $3.
Eric and Marilyn Crumbley started selling their affordable and tasty dishes at The Salvation Army on Lenox Ave. near W. 137th St. in September – and word has spread fast.
The meals have become so popular that next month the couple will open their own restaurant on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. at W. 122nd St. They’ve gone from serving just 10 meals a day to nearly 150.
Eric Crumbley, 44, a retired NYPD officer and a former pastor at Harlem Faith Center, started the affordable meals for seniors who were running out of money midway through the month.
“We were serving the seniors, and then we started to notice that everyone was coming in,” said Crumbley, who is the facilities manager at the Salvation Army site.
“It helps with mothers and fathers who really can’t afford a healthy meal to feed their children.”
The $3 meals, known as the Jireh Meal – taken from a biblical name for God – vary from day to day, including chicken parmesan over pasta with garlic bread or baked chicken with garlic mashed potatoes and sweet buttered corn. The kitchen is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Some customers, like Ramona Holmes, 60, chow down on the wallet-friendly meals for lunch every day.
“I come here every day. The food is delicious,” the Harlem Hospital worker said in between bites of her turkey wings, potatoes and string beans, which cost her $5. “You could pay $15 for what I have here.”
She said buying lunch was becoming unaffordable, especially as Harlem becomes more trendy, but many continue to face tough economic times.
“This is heaven-sent,” she said, noting the only options in the area before were a popular hamburger joint, Jimbo’s, and Miss Maude’s Spoonbread Too, a pricey soul food restaurant. “We really needed this place.”
Some of the other meals, prepared by Marilyn Crumbley, 49, who has 30 years of cooking experience, can cost as much as $6 per plate.
“The soul food cooking that I do is from the heart,” she said. “How different it is from Spoonbread or Sylvia’s is really price. This is the best deal in Harlem.”
Samantha Caillo, 40, agreed, and has become a weekly customer.
She picked up a $3 plate of barbecue rib tips with rice, beans and sweet buttered corn on Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s a good and affordable lunch,” she said. “That’s the key.”