The original plan was to go to Amy Ruth's, a popular soul food restaurant in West Harlem. However, there was an hour wait and we were hungry. It was 4pm and I had not eaten all day, so when I tell you I was hungry...you know. We  had set our minds for soul food so we were frantically searching on Yelp for other soul food restaurants in the area. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts at other restaurants - whose wait times were just as long as at Amy Ruth's - we stumbled across Melba's. It is a bustling, quaint restaurant on a quiet street. We were lucky to get seated quickly, but I think it is because it was just a party of two. 

I got the quintessential fried chicken, with mashed potatoes and collard greens as side dishes. It was pretty good, but I have had better. It was expensive for the quantity of food. Then again, I may be looking at it from a biased "Amy Ruth's" lens - their portions are huge and it's always delicious. The service wasn't great - we had to wait close to 20 minutes before the waitress took our order. It was busy though, so I cut her some slack, but the establishment, as a whole, should have had more staff on deck for the number of customers. There were only two servers.

Will I eat here again? I am not sure - maybe in the same circumstance, that is, with few choices at hand. If you do check it out, let me know what you think.

Rating: 3/5