Café Express: Lehman Cornerstone’s Delicious New Restaurant

East Harlem residents have a healthy, chic, new place to eat on Saturday afternoons: Café Express, staffed by NYCHA residents and located at the Lehman Cornerstone Community Center at Lehman Houses.

East Harlem residents have a healthy, chic, new place to eat on Saturday afternoons: Café Express, staffed by NYCHA residents and located at the Lehman Cornerstone Community Center at Lehman Houses. The pop-up café, launched by SCAN (Supportive Children’s Advocacy Network) New York, serves the tastiest smoothies, salads, sandwiches, and snacks around. It’s part of Get Healthy East Harlem, a program SCAN launched in 2015 to help residents learn to make better nutrition choices.

Patricia Burns, Resident Association President at Lehman Houses, said that before Café Express, if residents wanted a smoothie in the neighborhood, they’d have to spend $7-10, a price that’s out of reach for some residents. “I am proud, grateful, and happy for our café. It shows people how to do healthy things for themselves. Everything is fresh, plus it’s affordable. Bringing this to the community was the best thing to do.” Ms. Burns’ favorite smoothie is the “Ms. Kelley,” named after the director of SCAN’s Cornerstone Community Center at Lehman, made with mango, blueberries, and orange juice.

Get Healthy East Harlem is unusual because it was created by SCAN in partnership with NYCHA residents. “The whole process was to do resident engagement and find out the hurdles to getting fresh food and what strategies moving forward made sense,” said Bill Fink, SCAN’s Associate Executive Director for Development and External Affairs. “We did a series of events, and found out that what was important was families cooking and eating together and learning culinary skills.” Residents advocated for hands-on cooking classes for families; producing their own “Healthy Dance” videos; and managing marketing activities for the café, including naming all the smoothies. SCAN receives assistance with its cooking education classes from the New York Junior League CHEF program (Cooking &  Health Education for Families) and Red Rabbit, an East Harlem-based healthy meals company.

SCAN will also soon provide cooking labs for families twice a month at four of SCAN’s NYCHA community centers, at East River Houses, King Towers, Lehman Village, and Wagner Houses, starting in 2017. For more information about SCAN, visit www.scanny.org.