Red Rooster On The Prowl

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  February 21, 2011]

A chance at last to spy on Marcus Samuelsson's new central Harlem venture, on my way to a very late night entertainment at a very obscure and creepy bar.  Never mind that.

Red Rooster is a hit already - witness the difficulty in reserving a table, even off prime-time, less than a week or so out.

I recall that used to be the case for any reasonably successful New York restaurant, but it has been so long since it has been necessary, and we're all now accustomed (aren't we?) to picking up same day four tops at Per Se.

Anyway, although Harlem is a late night neighborhood, the little Rooster's hours don't reflect that.  Closed at 10.30, so taking no risks I show up around 10.  And it's slammed.  Tables fully occupied and a gaggle of people waiting to be seated.  The dining room is back behind the bar, an entirely open kitchen at the far end.  In front, the bar room is large, dominated by what I took to be a figure-eight shaped bar, although on reflection it's the shape of a guitar body; yes, just like Chuck Berry's swimming pool.  The greeter wishes me luck, but I didn't need it - one empty corner seat available, and everyone waiting is a couple at least.  I'm good.

This place is buzzing.  The crowd is a mix of neighborhood and destination foodies, quite smart, ordering a lot of champagne.  I hit the cocktails: the "Brownstoner" is a Manhattan variation featuring a nutmeg-infused Bourbon, with Cherry Heering as the co-star and St Germain as the final accent.  Muddy to look at but smooth to drink, slightly sweet, certainly strong enough - and this is a big cocktail, not one of those downtown speakeasy twenty-bucks-buys-a-thimble deals.  At $11, equitably priced; you can run to $15 for a cocoa tequila concoction with Antico Carpana and mole (yes mole) bitters.  The Gin & Juice made me smile - laidback - but it featured marmalade, which is a deal breaker in serious drinks.

I didn't see a wine list, although people were certainly ordering bottles.  There's a short, simple choice of wines by the glass; the beer list should be more ambitious.  The dinner menu is pretty simple too, and the restraint is laudable.  Nine appetizers, eight entrées, and a few bar snacks.  Which brings us to Merkato 55 (and feel free to skip if you don't like context).

Just a word, at least, about that mislocated pan-African effort, the major New York project which just anticipated Samuelsson's departure from Aquavit, the upscale Swedish restaurant where he had cooked (and mostly been in charge) for something like sixteen years.  I liked the food at Merkato very much, and said so once or twice.  But the menu was a challenge.  I think I am a reasonably well-informed and well-traveled diner, but the far-ranging selection of African dishes defeated me - many ingredients I didn't know and familiar ingredients in unfamiliar combinations.  Furthermore, it occupied a truly vast space in a burgeoning party district where the models and their dates were looking for noodles or burgers to soothe their nerves.

I felt sorry for Samuelsson, who had so doggedly stuck to his fancy Swedish guns for so long, and his talented executive chef Andrea Bergquist, when Merkato failed.  I don't know Samuelsson, and it's presumptuous to read personal motives into a commercial venture, but I can't help wondering if Red Rooster is a second attempt to achieve what he failed to achieve with Merkato.  He is Ethiopian by birth, lost his mother at a very young age, was raised by a Swedish couple, cooked in Sweden, and made his name as a master of modernized Swedish cuisine.  Is it too presumptuous to suppose that, in his early forties, another part of his heritage is seeking to find expression through his cooking?

In any case, if Merkato was over-reaching, Red Rooster is much more focused.  It is not simply an African American, let alone soul-food restaurant (it's a spit away from Sylvia's).  It may be an early articulation of what cooking in an increasingly diverse Harlem means in the twenty-first century (Harlem is Samuelsson's home).  Yes we have grits and oxtails and fried chicken.  We also have salmon, snapper in a tomato-kaffir lime broth, gravlax, oysters with a ginger dressing; the dirty rice is basmati and accented with curry leaves.  This is Samuelsson's cooking, internationally informed, made accessible to its immediate neighborhood.  Well done, and no wonder it's busy.  Let's eat.

I had my eye on the duck liver pudding.  What could it be?  A kind of boudin?  Maybe some sort of duck sausage?  No - emblematically the dish is much more refined and delicate than the description suggests (although it could have been more appealingly plated).  The pudding is warm, airy, soufflée-like, balanced on a thin tuile.  Penetrated, it oozes a smooth, pale soubise, with a mildly liverish after-taste.  It's accompanied by tender slices of cool duck pastrami resting on s alice of spiced pear.  The spice shows up in a few Szechuan peppercorns* decorated the plate's fruity glaze.  Almonds are a good idea, but need to be incorporated somehow, not just placed on the plate.  Not everyone has given this dish a good review - and I'd argue for revving up the liver flavor - but I thought it a fine example of honed technique applied to a downhome concept.

Nothing precious about the oxtails, though.

As with so many New York menus, you won't know if a dish is good for sharing until it shows up.  This surely is.  Two people could comfortably split it, and maybe find room for a side of greens.  If the duck pudding showed fancy footwork, this is just a left hook to the chin.  Fine, tender, appropriately fatty oxtails - the big hunks too, not the little ends - cooked in Mother's Milk, one of the better beers on the short list.  Starch courtesy of plantains - the yellow, which are slightly sweeter than the green.  A few sweet baby onions too.  Mop up that sauce and cancel the apple pie.

Prices are sweet.  Other than the steak entrées are in the teens and twenties, and all the snacks and sides - some of the appetizers too - are single digits.  Marcus Samuelsson was running the kitchen, finishing the plates, controlling the pass.  He has other ventures to look after of course, but the other piece of good news?  Chef Bergquist, who did such a good job at Merkato, is his surrogate here.

Here's the website.

*At least one print critic has identified these as "pink peppercorns," but I am sticking with my theory.  They caused a mild case of that familiar electric shock-numbing sensation.