hello and welcome you know what today is i don't need to tell you it's take over to say yes you're watching thirty frames a nd but today the women take over and boy what a show we have for you we got net locked up in the control room as usual were let him out to greet later but let's get this show started had a control room on tuesday night that is the night to go and you are not too old yet i was there last year there was an older man he was sitting in my girl to his wife he was doing something that looked like a song also plus it was he was jammin it that's what i love it's young old it's different ethnicities and what was your restaurant so so diverse everybody comes there what do you think that is i think because when you talk about comfort right comfort is something that's extremely diverse but sherry i want you to tell a story about when you came to the restaurant one tuesday night you have to tell my cameras like little story this is the st time i'd ever come on a tuesday night i was hosting the newlywed game and after i finished the newlywed game i was so hungry and i had the driver stop melba's and i walked in because i still have my my stuff on and the deejay said beery she is the executive producer of gospel showcase the media ministry she's also the executive producer of community college we are so excited to have her here now i'm saving the guests friend incredible renaissance woman of harlem now i guess i shouldn't use myself as well i'm lucy here i am one of the many women that take over the next control on takeover tuesday i used to do more than i do these days but i'm still part of the family let's get to the star of this show i am so excited to have melba melba wilson those of you who do not know mel this restaurant in harlem do not walk do not call and do not hesitate but run to melba's so food restaurant melba is born and raised in harlem we're going to find out so much more about it not only does she have a restaurant and a catering business she has partnered with some of the most influential people in new york city she has worked with and for others and others came during and serving them and just has been a staple in the harlem community and we are be gone proud to have you here welcome thank you to take over tucson i am so happy to be here and that opening number o family like i just wanted to get into my like my old african there and women of color definitely as i notice that they will pedal put a group of us together but it's some maybe slightly dangerous to have are all women of brown skin yes so let's get started let's start with harlem let's start with the diversity that has taken place and what you see being there so long well i am born bred in but it in harlem as you say lou however you know the home that i grew up in it's a totally harlem and it's not a secret we all know this so to see the changes that have happened in harlem some of them great some of them not so great you know we're the ones that made her loom what it is we've got the culture the community the food the charisma the style the hard part about this for me is seeing the mom and pops and able to afford a seat at the table in the house that we  so it's spits good on one hand and then the other hand you know of course the restaurant's busy is packed it's full when doing well but when i see a lot of business owners that look like me not being able to keep their space you know there is a space right next door to me that there is one hundred and fifty dollars a square foot literally wow so the room has more than doubled so that's alarming i think that when you do that you change the quite a few farmers markets in the community which i think is so important i also think that it's important for us to let our know to let our kids know where food comes from you know food doesn't come from a supermarket is born in the supermarket i think it's important for us to take our kids to the farmers markets but also to the farms to let them see there's some green markets in in harlem and i think those are things that we have to start with our kids when they're in preschool and kindergarten to let them see because ultimately they're the future and they're the ones that are things labelled do you try to avoid those things do you see restaurants that are now labeling those on the menu and things of that nature i definitely see do see that one of the things that we do is reuse free range chicken you know we sell a lot of chicken along bowls ok and when i see young girls it years old busy you know developing at an earlier stage and to me that's that's not right i think a lot of that does have to do with the pesticides and the injections and  you know into a lot of our foods so i do think that that it is definitely important to make sure that we like our greens that we use our organic greens it's different things that you can do of course they cost a little more today they definitely  and does that consumer have to understand that those screens might cost more than you might find at another place they're green but i think that some of the consumers do get it i do find i do feels a little different for me because i'm born and raised in you know so but i do personally my team we do personally try to keep everything price as moderately priced as possible and our theory is that while we may not make more per profit on that one item because of the order a lot of stuff for me and that not really however we just redid our menus yesterday and we and we did place three more three more items one of my dearest friends jackie is is a beacon and she's been big and probably for a little over a year now and  that's one of the things that jackie and i often talk about so yes we are putting our our black eyed peas hummus would have been making for years now but it wasn't on the menu so we're adding that as an appetizer and people that are not wrapper and we serve it with a thai chili sauce and it's one of our top top solely so to your point yes people are definitely some people are going towards a more begin a plant based diet however it is important for us to stay with our core that you know you can't always be everything to everybody so we are comfort food by nature the food of my great grandparents my grandparents grew up on my my great grandmother lived to be a one hundred and five when i was you know my grandmother lived girl let me actually do you source locally for your vegetables and i do know being a small business owner one of the top things that i've done for the over fifteen years that i've been in business is i maintain a lot of the same vendor still so it's important as a small business owner to support small businesses otherwise you know we won't have a future i do have one question to go back to you say when you signed the lease for your building did you ever acquire their property old if it's just yeah tomatoes i mean i don't really want to do you know it's you know in new york but it may be rosemary seasonal base that this season we can do that and we do that and it's great to be able to pick those fresh  you know one of the things this is about twenty miles for something as you and i were talking earlier but one of the things that our family did is everything was then in the kitchen over food and you know every major announcement  and food was always the common denominator so as my grandmother did i wanted to do that here in new york and i wanted to be able to unite people through food it didn't make a difference which marital status was which or sexual preference was what your a college education was i just wanted people to be able to come together through food and also is a great way to share stories my grandmother used as a tool to pakistan history lessons to tell us about  grandparents and her great grandparents and i wanted to be able to do the same thing in food is comforting to tell you about the culture of a person that allows you to travel it's a great escape and that's what i wanted to please put that book they took those yams bashed him up and put them in the waffles to make something different the next day you know because i got divorced when my son was five so oftentimes i'd be running off to a catering running to the restaurant to a meeting but i had to make him at least a great breakfast to bits you would give anyone wanting to open a business or at least be smart enough to maintain it as long as you have as many people of opened and did not how much they cost to stay open how do i keep up with the surrounding hospitality alliance which is a st time there's never been a person of color and a woman and as a president but one of the things that i would always tell people to do is to link up with a community organization that's in the field that you're looking to get  into one of the things that i did was think i had great mentors like during their parent and robert deniro they were amazing and still are amazing mentors my very different market salman's and you know as well as you know god bless you know sylvia was you know i had some great people in my life that really i'm going to get my ear to the ground that i was able to get to gaining experience in the industry and i also think one of the smartest things to do is recognize that you don't know everything i've worked in this industry information in turn with other people and when you say work for free it's not working for free because you yeah i do to kill every she gives she oh she was oh she is amazing are actually always hope someone if they need a job she was amazing also make sure you have a great lawyer and an even better champ is that the other she was a hard worker and made sure that everyone around her worked hard and so hard work didn't kill me so when i get something now i'm like i know i can go through this because i looked at what she did you know i mean if you look ninety's she prided briefly and as we sat there and had our grits and scrambled eggs a man pass by would a piano push and china silly and look in on both s example and you know i got a chance to watch and to be mentored by her at such a young and it early age and i think because it was me she kind of like you know i got it ten times harder than you know than than any other way that probably worked there but i think she also saw something in me what you know and she taught me how not to give up she taught me how to get through adversity how to deal with rough times how to dot my eyes and cross my t's but again one of the most important things she taught me was the things you don't know what's most important and to really go after those things ladies i have to say one other thing mel do displayed something when i was with her a couple of weeks ago when her restaurant i came by to say hi and there were a number of pain patrons as i'm sure she gets on a daily basis nothing crazy but this could have been and or your distributor for fish had changed and maybe there was something not to the exact liking and you told the customer they should have brought it to your attention and you made it up by giving them a high or something working with as many people as i do i went home that day and i was because i remember hearing myself not be so kind when someone would say they were not happy with something or something and every single person that came to you melba and i didn't sit there a few minutes i was sitting there hours and she and that's one thing it kept registering my head customer is always right be polite this is your your living this is how you make a living but customers that and some of the things they complain veronica i swear what's your favorite choice for dessert we can give you too can i have that to go and i just said they're gone i gotta get back because sign there yet and that was awesome i just want you to know eyes are watching you like we say all the it's not it's not because i want to know you know some people don't want i want to know but i'm also from harlem so i can read through that ok but it doesn't make a difference what's important to me is that my guests when they walk out they're happy you know i don't advertise so every person that walks in that door is by word of mouth they heard about it and they read about it is i don't really learn social media but nine times out of ten somebody told them about it  so i want to try to make everybody's experience a great experience doing always succeed no and if we don't i do want to know why so i'm a girl come to me and tell me let me know and again like i said sometimes i know ok but then i also know what was going on and that later on that day she was right we had changed our fishmonger over so there was a possibility what she was saying was correct so i wanted to look into it but it's important for 's if you haven't been there again it is very small it's very personable and you feel you walk in and you feel like you're with family it's not something she needs a place that you couldn't laugh here somebody else laughing and it's this and i think that was very wise the because i think a lot of people when they think of business let me go all out let me try to be grandstanding and then they have to cut back on service or cut back on something and you you just said how long so you were in for two hundred and four and just the last three years you bought the space next to last just the last two years however i thought at least in two thousand and four but opened in two thousand and five so now there are one hundred and nine dollars seats together  combine however i do have to say that when i was thinking of expanding one of the things that i did was i talked to our regular guys that come in and one of the things that they said was they love the intimacy of space so instead of breaking the wall down and making it one big space we made it two separate spaces one and the only one i wonder why you did that forty nine because i guess it was important for them to maintain the size and the intimacy just like you just said of the original space  we highly recommend reservations this way when you come in you don't have to wait for the name of los angeles can be anywhere from five minutes to two hours you know also but if you have a reservation your reservation is always an order knights of the week because i think we heard someone earlier everyone tonight that is within the sound of our voices i have decided to go there now i'm going to say with the exception of serial killers everyone else is there tonight i got  in a shack i wonder where i'm going to die neither white nor black none of these something black women in washington d c and they all came out in support handle of the home and so what are your thoughts on what's happening to these women of color being told to go back to your country so how do you raise a go back to africa but well it's almost like saying that it is based really as you know i look at the president and i can say our president personally i don't know if we elected him  but look at what the president saw and i think that everything that he does pretty much is disgraceful i've always been proud to be an american but when i look at the way he is misrepresenting this country  disgraceful it truly is and i think that he knows that there's so much power in women i think he's afraid of it and something he has no respect for as i think i think when you look at the comments that he made about grabber by the end all in all the ways that have security now and you know if i was a mom of two girls on us to see this represented by a man who supposedly runs this country it's extremely upsetting it's disturbing  i think that when the president makes a comment like go back to your country i think what he needs to think about is look at his kids mothers all except for one thing when he says it's so he's also saying it to them as well is that what he really wants right right you know i think it's about also being a dividing us and also not allowing us to look at the true elements ok because what we really should be focusing on right now is is the kids in out get out i remember when i became a new mom and even at nineteen that's a fear the gulf or bit of something happens to me happens to me or my son and the fact that we have to be ripped apart right in the biggest fear thing that it's a lot of these  when their parents as americans how do we put humans in cages you know i think that's the best the bigger question is for trump supporters is how do you know how do you support this like how you're conscious can you support this and and be ok with this like here go back to africa i think the pageant for miss michigan miss michigan in the same framework you know just go back to your countries you're not from here i don't think they're say the way they're answering camps the way they're trying to explain it is they're not saying it because of a color base what they're saying is if you complain about america and go back to where you're from right they're trying to see anyone that was complaining but they misunderstand complaining and speaking on behalf of things you don't like things you want to change things you see that are being done that are injustice things of that nature but they're  here that's what it's come to i am so so happy to announce that the in september again we will be having the african day parade which is always something we love another  down to between four and six it's right and it had to be right so i had my different keesha harris came in and i would like the rest of the test everyone just as i wrote them yes sometimes it had to be done four times five times you know two times sometimes it was just right well the next book of all and to be a test chicken you think about college greens you know you think about i wanted to do oh god some issues going to come into this i wanted to do what we call oh god this is so bad it's called road kill but it's like wild things your passion and taking young people under your wing i saw you be so patient with some employees some young men the particular the ice bucket  you see what i mean we need it to shows but i knew we were going to