Chef Melba Wilson, owner of Melba's in Harlem, NY, joined Cheddar News to provide some tasty cuisine for Cheddar News.

<div class="block">Chef Melba Wilson, owner of Melba&#39;s in Harlem, NY, joined Cheddar News to provide some tasty cuisine for Cheddar News.</div>

beWell

Be Well: Acclaimed Chef Melba Wilson on Her Favorite Dishes, Family Roots

Melba, I am so excited to be here. Not only because all this food is on the table, but I know you as a staple here in the Harlem community. But you've been getting a lot of attention on social media. So talk to me about who you are most excited to see, come into the restaurant. Well, I'm super excited to have you here today. OK. So let's let's start there. There are a lot of kings and queens here in my local community, but we also had the Duke and the Duchess of Sussex. Yes, Harry and Megan, Prince Harry, his first chicken and waffles right here in Harlem at me and my kids will be happy to, oh my God, I love and has been coming here literally since she was about 15 years old and Tom Holland, we absolutely love him. And he said that my fish was really, really good. It is and I see it right here on the table. But the other thing that you've been going viral for is the macaroni and cheese and the stringy test. So I wanna see if it passes the stringy test. OK. Let's see if your macaroni and cheese passes the cheese string test. Oh, I see. String. Go again. Go again. Oh, it's, and it's gooey. Can you see the, and gooeyness like that? The cheesiness. It, it stuck to the fork. It's so cheesy. So I gotta taste that. It's hot. It's hot. Be careful. Oh, that's good. It's good. It's very cheesy. It, very cheesy black girl from Harlem. I cannot have macaroni and cheese. It doesn't have any cheese in it. So I have three types of cheese in there. Really have my mozzarella cheese, a little bit of pepper, Jack just to give it a pop of spice. And of course, everything is better with cheddar as you know, I say cheddar. Right. Right. I like cheddar and then you have your fish here. We mentioned this earlier special about the fish. I'm gonna, well, my fish is light. It's delicious and it's one of the top sellers here at, at, you know, it's catfish and um it's southern just like me and it's delicious. It's not too heavily breaded, which I like. Not at all. You can taste the fish very, very good. And I also season my flour like there's no way you can fry anything in my house without seasoned flour. OK? Now my wife makes a mean pot of greens. What makes your greens special and unique? Um My grandmother when she made soul food, she would put the ham hocks in there. So I wanna know a little bit of a healthier um, version of comfort food. A K A salt. And I use smoked and your cookbook. They have all these recipes in it. They sure do. They sure do. This is my cookbook on Simon and Schuster, uh, called Melvin's American concert. Wow. Ok. Now, I haven't tasted anything with the barbecue sauce and the hot sauce. But you now have these available for you to buy as well. Yes. So we had so many guests coming in and they're asking us, we wanna take a bit of Melvins home with us or whenever people see us on, on the tube or social media, they're like, what kind of Melbourne's can we take home? Even if you don't visit the restaurant, you can come in and you can take a taste of Melvin's Comfort home with you. We have our barbecue sauce which we use on our short ribs and be, I personally use it on my burgers. You know, when I season my burger, I put a little bit of barbecue sauce just to give it a bit of um, take it over the edge and my hot sauce. Come on now. You know, hot sauce is amazing. And you're big on sauces. Do you have a sauce on this? Yes. Yes. Spring roll. That's my uh spring roll. It has collard greens, uh peas and rice, a tad bit of cheese in it. And you can use a Thai chili sauce which is what I'm using here today. More duck sauce. Wait, what is on top though? Oh, that's a little, uh, fried calories. Crunched it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned you would like to put a healthy twist on some of your food because comfort food is not always the healthiest. So, how do you balance the comfort with the health aspects? Well, you know, it's, it's all, it's also about moderation. Right. It's about moderation, I think, you know, my grandparents lived to be my grandmother, my great grandmother, 100 and five, my grandmother, 100 and my grandfather 99. And they ate this type of food every day. You love the recipes that I found a lot of the recipes. Definitely. But, you know, everything is in moderation here as long as we work out and we get it done, we can make this happen. Well, well, you're making it happen and it tastes good in the meantime. And you know, we can't leave without trying your famous chicken and waffles. Wait, you mean the chicken and waffles? The one that I beat the iron chef, Bobby Flay? Sorry, Bobby. You know, but I did, I did, I, I did slay the flame. You did. I really, really did. So, a lot of people get afraid of a meal that looks this amazing and large. Well, I have to tell you chicken and waffles like me was born bread and butter right here in Harlem started by a gentleman named Mr Wells. Um and it was actually my son who inspired me to put eggnog in my waffles. So, yeah, yeah, we're throwing down a different type of way. I love that and I am definitely living here happy with all this food. Go ahead and wrap this up for me, please. Thank you so much, mel, appreciate it and welcome back home. Yes.