When an idea is a good idea it comes together fast. The one we are discussing here flickered to life in February 2014 during a late night afterparty at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami. There, Herb Karlitz, a veteran food event creator, and Marcus Samuelsson, the Ethiopian-born, Sweden-raised chef who helped put Harlem on the modern culinary map with his Red Rooster restaurant, began discussing the idea of a food festival for the New York neighborhood.


"We looked at each other and said 'it’s time,'" Mr. Karlitz said in a phone interview from his Times Square-area office. "We both knew what that meant. He was established at Rooster. He had cred – I don’t mean just restaurant cred. Here’s a guy who's not even a native, who came from Sweden, who walks around Harlem -- there are people are up there who don’t like change -- but he was now one of Harlem's biggest employers and supported many causes there." 

Within three months of that conversation at the biggest food festival in the country, the newest one was announced at a press conference in Harlem with former President Bill Clinton and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Not that it can be said to be a small festival. The inaugural Harlem Eatup! festival, which runs May 14 - 17, 2015, features pairings of big name chefs like Sean Brock, Bobby Flay and Ludo Lefebvre with Harlem stalwarts like Mark Henegan, Joseph Hayes III, and Antonino Settepani, cooking at neighborhood standouts like Madiba Harlem and The 5 and Diamond with musical accompaniment.

The event shows off everything Mr. Karlitz has learned over three decades in the big event business, bringing together celebrity chefs, major sponsors, and plenty of music. His resume is deep, having helped produce a Rat Pack Reunion tour in the 1980s with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin, as well as "Hands Across America," the follow-up to the “USA For Africa” hunger relief campaign, and numerous food events for corporate and charity clients: a pop-up restaurant at the London Olympics with Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto for Chase Visa cardmembers, parties in support of City Meals on Wheels, the Flavor Napa! festival, Vegas Ucork'd and many others. He knows what he's doing, and now he's deploying his skills and his staff to the benefit of a long-struggling but also artistically and culturally rich neighborhood. 

Here, in his own words, Mr. Karlitz talks about his thinking behind the Harlem event.

"It’s Harlem's time. This festival is bigger than me and Marcus. We are helping unite a community that is so in the midst of major change. Marcus has helped make Harlem a little more user friendly for visitors. But bringing in guest chefs like Flay and Michael White and Aaron Sanchez, you are saying we are both paying homage to local chefs and offering a marketing draw to bring people up to Harlem."

"Clinton is going to be kicking this off at noon on Saturday in Morningside Park. He has tweeted about the festival. He is involved. And look at the sponsors. They are not the normal food and wine sponsors. You have Ernst & Young as a founding sponsor. They want to support small businesses in the inner city. They are a corporation with a vision and took a stand and put their money where their mouth is. Citbank recreated this famous photo from 1958 which had the world's greatest jazz musicians. This one is with 66 chefs. That picture is going to be blasted across every Citi ATM terminal the whole weekend."

[E&Y and Citibank paid "in the six figures" to be founding sponsors.]

"I’m not saying there are’t a ton of tourists already in Harlem. There are lines around the block at the  the Abyssinian Baptist Church to attend services and see gospel."

"I keep getting asked in interviews 'what do you consider a success and what are you worried about?' I’m praying for good weather. I’m also hoping that when people leave they say they had a good time. People ask 'Do you have security?' Yes, of course, but the last two muggings I heard of, one was on 84th and Park Avenue and the other was in Central Park."

"Every week in Harlem there is a new restaurant opening. The best rugelach is in a hole in the wall restaurant on 118th street off Frederick Douglass [Lee Lee's]. It’s better than the rugelach you get from Russ and Daughters on the Lower East Side."

"We made sure that even though we were appealing to people outside Harlem, we also appealed to people inside Harlem with reasonable ticket prices. You need sponsors to make that happen.There are even free events. Anyone can see all the celebrity chef demos for free. And on Sunday there is a whole set of free demonstrations with the Knicks and the Red Bulls. People can come interact. Even the chef special diners at $125 per ticket, we are not covering costs with the ticket prices. We want to make sure we establish this festival well the first year so that it goes on for many years to come."