Business

Black-owned fish shop survives Harlem’s shift

By Nicholas Bass

Fish fried hard, a side of fries, two slices of bread. That’s what Donnice Washington orders every time she makes the 45-minute drive from upstate Westchester County to H pick up her favorites from Famous Fish Market on St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem.

Just as that historic neighborhood’s Black population has declined over the decades, so have its Black-owned businesses, pushed out by rising rents and other factors. But, at Famous Fish Market, the more things have changed, the more they’ve stayed the same.

“They always deliver, they always come through,” said Washington, whose children also are fans of  Famous Fish.

The takeout-only restaurant opened in 1973 when owners Eloise Cherry and her husband Al Cherry decided to convert their barber and beauty shop into a fish joint. Their nephew, Eric Strickland, bought it from them in 1989. “The recipes that we’re using now … for the fish and the shrimp, his grandmother come up with that,” said Strickland, referring to his Uncle Al’s granny’s recipe. Al Cherry had been a cook in the Navy.

“My dad,” said Strickland’s daughter, Erica Scott, Famous Fish’s accountant, payroll manager and secretary, “he’s a military man and he is big on consistency. He is big on being about your business, he’s big about the closest distance between two points is a straight line, so get straight to it.”

Their patrons? “I love every single customer,” she said. “If it wasn’t for them, it would be no us.”