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Red Rooster makes Lenox Avenue swing again. Marcus Samuelsson’s long-in-coming central-Harlem restaurant is all it was meant to be, and more. Crowing cockily to the chef’s quirky command, it’s fun for everyone — from locals starved for
better dining options to the Foodie Curious who’ve stormed it since Day One.
This is not your garden-variety, overhyped, celeb-chef eatery opening.
At Red Rooster, Harlem’s fabled long-ago and its emerging new-age embrace like old friends. Many-hued faces mix and mingle at the gorgeous front bar — some just to hang, others yearning for tables in the dining room behind it. Uptowners in hats and furs, downtowners in late-winter black feast equally, not separately, on a strange smorgasbord of a menu that ranges from blackened catfish to tacos and tostadas to Swedish meatballs.
For all the acclaim over the joint’s effortless multiculturalism, this is first and foremost a grand new place to eat — and a breeze to reach on the 2 and 3 trains (125th Street station) and the M-102 bus. But it also marks a milestone in Harlem’s unfolding regeneration.
In tightly woven Manhattan, one popular restaurant can transform all around it. Odeon “made” TriBeCa, just as other downtown eateries with blaring music and milling drunks unmade their once-genteel blocks. Red Rooster might accelerate Harlem’s ongoing, evolutionary change to warp speed.
Red Rooster belongs to a very different Harlem than gentrifying Frederick Douglass Boulevard to the west, with its overpublicized “restaurant row.” In Harlem’s historic heart, it’s something of an interloper among long-established locals who are unsentimental about the area’s distant Jazz-Age past and wary of being priced out of what they regard as their neighborhood.
Samuelsson has tried to enfranchise them, hiring local talent for the kitchen and floor and tapping community artists, as well. No surprise: His unusual life and career define “inclusion.” Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised, New York-seasoned, he took over the kitchen of modern-Scandinavian Aquavit at age 24, and made it a three-star place. Now 40, he has landed popular TV gigs, but his “consulting” restaurant gigs beyond Aquavit flopped. Most embarrassingly, Merkato 55 booted him a week after he’d given an interview touting its African-inspired menu.
Samuelsson learned his lesson. He left Aquavit to devote himself full-time to launching his own place in the uptown nabe that’s now his home. Some old-timers resent the way a chef associated with expense-account Midtown has conquered the territory.
Yet, Harlemites were long without good places to eat. Archaic soul-food joints were worse than political correctness made it permissible to say. I had maybe the worst meal of my life at “legendary” Copeland’s, which closed four years ago. Credit card companies long redlined the area, forcing places to take cash only. Meanwhile, Harlem’s entrenched power brokers did no favors for outsiders hoping to break in.
Enter Samuelsson. After predictable construction delays, Red Rooster hit the ground running three months ago and never looked back. Everybody goes there — local families and dating couples, business guys at lunch talking about finding their “niche audience,” Cicely Tyson and Cathie Black, Jimmy Fallon and Wynton Marsalis. One night we saw Harlem Globetrotters. “I didn’t know they still played,” my underinformed friend gulped.
It’s hard to imagine a place as sweetly managed, even when the evening crush comes close to overwhelming the hosts. Dressing up is definitely permitted; nowhere else will you find as colorful an array of young and old, of beards and hats (the latter on both sexes), than at the scallop-edged horseshoe bar.
The tile-floored dining room doesn’t have a bad seat, whether at tables, banquettes or in cozy booths. The main attraction is the open kitchen, where Samuelsson, his chef de cuisine Andrea Bergquist and a platoon of cooks toil beneath a mural of rooster parts and recipes.
“This menu is all over the map,” a friend said. “But so is Marcus,” she smiled. Samuelsson’s vision was to channel Harlem “through the immigrant’s lens,” he says. Rather than aim for anything formulaic, it’s sprinkled with African-American, Southern, Mexican, Caribbean, Swedish, Ethiopian and Jewish influences, among others — all in “the spirit of comfort,” he says. So personal a vision can be an unfocused mess without attention to detail, which has yet to flag. There’s nothing light about it. Sugar, salt and butter are as much in evidence as seasonal produce, North African spices, soy and mustard greens.
A few of the fusions work better on paper than on the plate, like “lox and lax” — smoked and salt-cured salmon didn’t taste different enough to justify the cutesy name. Fried “yard bird” and hearth-baked lemon chicken arrived dry for my taste, despite an abundance of vivid, exotic seasonings.
Braised oxtail, which ought to shred like paper, proved leaden. But most everything else hit the spot, starting with irresistible crusted cornbread served with piquant tomato chutney and dreamy honey butter.
Fiery blackened catfish, Samuelsson’s take on the blackened mackerel and herring of his youth, scored big-time — juicy, really black and rubbed with a curry-like sizzle of “secret” spices. Did I mention pickled cucumbers over black-eyed peas?
Several modestly named dishes new to most New Yorkers are composed along African lines, yet suavely calibrated for cosmopolitan tastes. “Chicken & egg” might be the best — a fascinating, happy blur of shredded chicken and seared liver under a runny, sunny-side-up egg. They merge with a stewy toss of chutney, cottage cheese, parsley, berbere and lemon zest.
Rich and rugged “warm roasted barley” could convert a sumo wrestler to vegetarianism. Onion broth layered with miso and black soy embrace roasted and simmered barley. Charred sunchokes crowned this wonderful, spoon-slurpable concoction. “Uptown” steak frites, a crisply turned-out New York strip, included the greatest fries in captivity — crisp, square logs that remind you of how spuds are supposed to taste.
Not-to-miss desserts include “black and white” mud, a cheesecake-y affair on a salted cookie crisp. They’re as sweetly appropriate as smartly chosen wine, beer and crazy-cocktail lists.
Samuelsson should take nothing for granted. He doesn’t have the following of a Mario Batali or a Bobby Flay. Red Rooster’s long-term success depends on its neighborhood reception — and the neighborhood has not seen entrees priced at up to $32 (but most mains are $14 to $26). Many dishes have so many elements, the least inattention would reduce them to vapid muddles. Samuelsson will have to show the dedication he did to Aquavit before he became famous. So far he shows every sign of doing that.
Bring on the next Harlem renaissance.
scuozzo@nypost.com
The new restaurant row
LENOX Avenue is well on its way to having a “restaurant row.” Here are a half-dozen places within a few blocks of Red Rooster. (Call ahead: Several of them are not always open for lunch.)
LENOX LOUNGE
288 Lenox Ave. (near 124th Street)
212-427-0253
Food and drink are erratic at this romantic, 1930s art deco legend, beautifully restored in 1999. But the jazz and the atmosphere more than make up for it, especially in the rear Zebra Room. The spirit of long-ago regulars John Coltrane and Miles Davis lives on.
NATIVE
161 Lenox Ave. (at 118th Street)
212-665-2525
Bright corner spot for “eclectic” American dishes at low prices — including rich seafood soup loaded with mussels and shrimp for all of $8.95 — and expertly grilled salmon with herb-mustard butter for $14.95. Skip the pasta. There’s a cheerful little serpentine bar and sidewalk seating in warm weather.
SETTEPANI
196 Lenox Ave. (at 120th Street)
917-492-4806
Very respectable Italian on another good corner. Spacious, earth-tone room with comfy banquettes offers fine views of the avenue. One of Marcus Samuelsson’s neighborhood faves. I enjoyed rigatoni alla Norma with tomato, eggplant and aged ricotta, all for just $9 (lunch) or $14 (dinner). There’s Sunday evening jazz and brunch on weekends.
SOUTH BEACH CAFE
277 Lenox Ave. (at 124th Street)
212-222-1995
A simple storefront setting for African- and Caribbean-inspired main dishes, like lamb with peanut sauce for $10. But it’s worth busting the bank for $15 grilled tilapia. Skip the wraps and burgers. No liquor.
CHEZ LUCIENNE
308 Lenox Ave. (bet. 125th and 126th streets)
212-289-5555
Established French bistro with charming vibe, classic banquettes, mirrors and bustling bar. Super-friendly waitstaff and honest dishes including coq au vin and saucisson chaud en croute. It’s no Red Rooster, but it has its own loyal following. This is the place you read about on Page Six where a Charlie Rangel aide had a fit over an umbrella.
SYLVIA’S
328 Lenox Ave. (at 126th Street)
212-996-0660
There’s nothing to say about the long-running soul-food spot that hasn’t been said, so we won’t try. But a young woman who lives nearby and knows the Harlem dining scene cheerfully told us, “It needs to up its game.” The place feels faded, but busloads of foreign tourists don’t seem to mind.