American recipes with his global
perspective. Evening seatings at Red
Rooster feature a rotating cast of
power brokers and celebs, from frequent guest Mayor Michael Bloomberg to actress Rose Byrne, who sat
across from me the last time I managed to get a dinner reservation.
Brunch is easier, if you get there
soon enough. In warmer months
the seats spill onto the sidewalk; in
the winter the crowds pack into the
dining room and bar area. You’ll be
rewarded with the city’s best take on
fried chicken: Samuelsson’s Fried
Yard Bird is dark meat covered in
mace gravy with a shaker of hot
pepper on the side. Other familiar
comfort foods, such as macaroni and
cheese and corn bread, are represented, as are homey Swedish plates
such as meatballs and a local twist
on smorgasbord, featuring gravlax,
smoked trout and country ham.
I always need a walk after a
brunch, and there’s no better way to
see Harlem than by foot. From the
Rooster, I walk south on Lenox and
then cut over one block on 124th
Street to the entrance of Marcus
Garvey Park. When I ask Welcome
to Harlem’s Johnson about her
favorite stroll, she says, right o; the
bat, “Walking through Mount Morris
Park,” using the name for the neighborhood that surrounds the park.
“People are always surprised how
drastically Harlem changes in one or
two blocks. It gets quiet and subur-
ban here, and it’s surrounded by nice
examples of 19th- and 20th-century
residential architecture.”
On Sundays the park is relatively
quiet, but all day long on Saturdays
it plays host to Harlem’s only farm-
ers market. From here, it’s a stroll in
the downtown direction to El Museo
del Barrio and East Harlem, but I
think it’s best to first get familiar
with Central Harlem.
ART WALK
It’s a short stroll back up to 125th
Street and over to the Studio
