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Red Rooster: Does the window front of Red Rooster, an upscale bar and restaurant smack in the center of Harlem, give a glimpse of what is to come for the historic hood? If so, longtime residents can brace themselves for ABBA, mason jars of pickled vegetables, and a whole lotta downtown bankers who have discovered a new foodie hotspot—that strongly suggests reservations—mere steps away from a 2/3 station. Hitching onto the country-fried trend wagon, Top Chef Master’s Marcus Samuelsson’s two-floor restaurant serves up reinventions of a cuisine that is certainly not new to the neighbors—soul food like Fried Yard Bird ($18) and Blackened Cat Fish ($22) fill the menu. The horseshoe-bar hooks Renaissance-named ringers like the Apollo (gin, ginger, egg white foam and sage, $12) and La Marqueta (tequila, vermouth and mole bitters, $15), though the prices are certainly no throw-backs. Overall, Red Rooster (named after a bar that was shuttered in the '70s), is a seamless mix of old and new. But when a Harlem bar is more likely to play Dylan than Armstrong, then the times, they are a'changing.
Reviewed: 2/16/2011
Photographs by: Paul Brissman |
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