Yes, Chef (39 page)

A month went by and we did a presentation for Billy Hunter, the landlord of a building we loved right off 125th Street. My friend Derek and I are friends with his daughter-in-law, Meghan. We started pushing her relentlessly to get him to sign and all she would say is, “Let me work on it, let me work on it.” Finally, in mid-April, we signed the lease. The place was big, more than we anticipated: two floors, and more than 10,000 square feet.

We figured we needed to raise about a million dollars. By the time we were finished with construction, it would cost us about three times as much. As we built out the space, every day, people came by and asked when we would open. The old ladies thought we were stupid for building a restaurant on the block next to Sylvia’s, and all the young businesspeople in the neighborhood kept telling us to make sure we had takeout. Nobody could imagine a restaurant where people would sit and linger in the middle of all the drama that is 125th Street.

We built the bar in front to reflect the construction of churches, and used copper to echo the regal nineteenth-century history of Harlem.
If we were going to build something for downtowners and Harlemites, we thought, it should be something everyone can be proud of. The bar had to be a horseshoe shape that practically screamed, “Just come on in!” At one end of that bar, we built out a little corner in the style of a street stand as a shout-out to the African street vendors on 116th. From the beginning, we filled the space with our personal treasures. There are recipes on the wall from Andrew’s aunt Ginny and my grandmother Helga. Behind the bar, there’s a gigantic bookshelf filled with things that meant something to me. I always wanted a shelf to tell my story to Harlem—the books tell my journey from my old Swiss cookbooks to
Amharic for Beginners
.

We did a preview of the restaurant downtown: We called it “Red Rooster at Soho House.” It was supposed to be for 85 people but 150 showed up. It was good that there was a buzz, but not so good in the sense that we were just trying out dishes—almost like a friends-and-family dinner. But I forced myself to relax, to go with the flow. This was a new audience for me: they were younger, most of them had never been to Aquavit, they had no reference point for my Swedish-Ethiopian-uptown style of cooking. But it was a good test group. Did I wish that they had put their BlackBerries away during dinner? Yes. But they also loved the flavors and that, more than anything else, was what I cared about. We served a smoked salmon with grain mustard yogurt and bagel chips. Those were gone in seconds. The shrimp and grits were also a big hit. I thought we could have added sausage and some greens to the grits, but overall, it was delicious. And while I’m always trying to create something new and inventive, the bottom line is that the food has to taste good. The main course was a roasted chicken with sweet potato gratin, a wholly new dish for me: I cured the chicken in lemon and served it with an Ethiopian sauce. That went well, but I knew we could do better. For dessert, we served a Harlem favorite: red velvet cake, which we paired with a root beer float. All in all, a good day.

The Soho House preview stood out as a high point because there had been so many low points leading up to it. Building a new restaurant space in Manhattan is no joke. We were all in over our heads. I
had never been so tested. We almost ran out of money but we never cut corners. I wouldn’t change a thing about the experience—the panic, the stress, the core beliefs—but I also don’t know if I’d ever want to live through it again.

As always, starting a new venture made me think about the people who helped shape my journey and my story. In the restaurant business, when you can’t get a construction permit or a liquor license, you have to hire a fixer. For thousands of dollars, these people will work through invisible channels to get the jobs done. In New Orleans, they don’t talk about the dead as ghosts, they talk about them as
your people
. When people in New Orleans talk about
your people
this is what they mean: an invisible tribe of fixers, loved ones who are working to help you on the other side. I have come so far from so little I do not doubt that my people are working double shifts. I know who they are: my father, Lennart. My grandmother, Helga. My Swiss friend, Mannfred. And then there is my mother. While it could well be that she’s busy cooking up blessings for me, I do not see her as part of that spiritual counsel. She did her saint’s work in life, not in death. She saved me with little more than the strength of her will and the pure might of her love. She’s the ultimate fixer. She fixed me.

F
OOD MEMORIES GIVE PEOPLE
something to talk about—our food, our culture, our journey. The North Star here is Harlem. The restaurant had to be a place that honored and mirrored the mystique of the renaissance but showed the new Harlem—inclusive of both old and new. The menu had to tell the story of
all
of Harlem’s residents—Latin, Southern, Caribbean, Jewish, Italian. When I cook, I see faces: When I make meatballs, I see my grandmother and her smile. When I make my flan with condensed milk and whipped chocolate, I try to honor all the young Latinas from Spanish Harlem for whom this is a signature dish. My take on dirty rice—shrimp with curry rice—is a tribute to all of the many multiracial Jamaican families who are a mix of black, Indian, and Chinese. I want to do them all justice.

I wanted the menu at Red Rooster to reflect all that Harlem has
to offer, which meant it was designed with our neighbors in mind: For example, we serve our Jamaican beef patties with a Mexican-inspired
salsa verde
. Corn bread had been a fascination since we served it at the White House at the state dinner—there’s just something comforting about it, something that says, “Come on in. Make yourself at home. Stay for a while.” The Rooster corn bread comes with homemade honey butter, a nod to classic soul food, and an African spiced tomato jam. Instead of plain old mac and cheese, we served mac and greens: Collards are a soul food staple, but we make it luxurious with a mix of Gouda, cheddar, and Comté cheeses. There are some things on the menu that you’ll taste, but not see: like
sofrito
, which I learned to make from the Puerto Rican cooks at Aquavit. A mixture of olive oil, garlic cloves, shallots, jalapeños, coriander, lemon, and cilantro,
sofrito
is like a shortcut to flavor. You just add it to the pan with everything from steaks to sautéed vegetables and it gives everything more kick.

Imperfection is exactly what I was looking for in the Rooster menu. I wanted the food to be done right, but to be more like a Polaroid picture than a high-def image on a flat-screen TV. I imagined plates that have a worn-out feel but food that tastes farmers’ market fresh. I wanted the waiters to wear stylish tunics and clean jeans, something they were comfortable in. I wanted the music to be B-sides, not the hits. So much of what makes a restaurant are the things you don’t notice, but only feel.

I knew that fried chicken would be an essential component of the Rooster menu, but it was one of the toughest dishes for me (a) to master, and (b) to reinvent. It’s so hard to truly own a dish when you didn’t grow up eating it. Chefs are trained, but inevitably our strength as flavor builders goes back to our childhoods and the tastes and combinations we learned as a kid. It’s why I’m so comfortable with gravlax and meatballs and why, even in Harlem, you’ll see those dishes on the menu. The tang, texture, and savory nature of those dishes are imprinted in my bones. I loved roasting chicken with my grandma, Helga, and coming back the next day for chicken soup and dumplings. But American fried chicken was different, and because so many
people have made versions of the dish that are so good, it was almost too daunting to take that dish on.

It was a good thing that Michael Garrett, my executive chef, had fried chicken in his bones. That surely helped in my tutorial. I began with Michael’s recipe—it’s an excellent recipe. It’s “you got that aunt who can really cook / it’s family reunion time / get your grub on / yummy.” Then I started to play around with the formula. Here’s where I landed after an entire summer of my own private fried chicken master class: I marinate it in coconut milk, cure it in lemon, then I steam it—bone in. I fry it in day-old oil, then I serve it with greens, sweet potato fries, buttermilk dressing, and hot sauce. And then just to add a touch of myself to it: pickled watermelon rind.

The watermelon rind was an important touch for me because one thing that I’ve steadily grown into over the years is the idea of using the extras in the kitchen that traditionally get thrown away and converting them into food that’s fantastic. My grandmother used to serve us fish liver. Then in the late eighties, when I began working in kitchens, fish livers were thrown away. Now monkfish liver is back—and it’s an expensive delicacy. So I play around with the leftovers in the dishes we’re testing for the restaurant. Wouldn’t our customers love Ethiopian coffee–crusted duck with pickled watermelon rind? How about citrus-glazed broccoli stems? That’s all luxury, but it comes from a waste-nothing mentality. I can’t tell you how many broccoli stems the average restaurant just throws away. I want Red Rooster to waste nothing.

I walked by the Rooster every day as construction continued. How far were we behind? Would we open on time? Would we have enough money? The clock was ticking, rent was being paid on an empty space, the press was watching. Andrew and I talked about it; it’s good to have pressure—it keeps you focused. During my walks, I looked at how Harlem has changed, even in the six years since I moved here. People were walking with Target bags now. It made me smile.

In the weeks before the restaurant opened I wondered at times if
people would come. Harlem is eighteen minutes in a cab from midtown, and Soho is twenty-two minutes. But those eighteen minutes are a very different ride. For our potential clientele on the Upper West Side and Upper East Side, it’s just ten minutes in a taxi. But people keep asking me, “Is it safe? Will I be able to get a taxi home?” We were in all new territory. I had this feeling that the downtown crowd who know my work would come at least once, to check us out. But would they keep coming? In order for this restaurant to be successful, I needed them to keep coming.

Before the opening, I went home to visit my mother and, as I always do, I went out for a long run. I ran by my father’s former office building; it’s now a furniture store. I hear his voice so much in my head that it’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since he passed away. I ran by Mosesson, my old cooking school, and I remembered how much I loved everything I learned, how my dreams were so simple when I was just a naive, hungry kid. I ran by the Italian restaurant where I learned to make pasta and by Belle Avenue, where I first encountered the world of fine dining. When I thought about how much time had passed since I worked at those restaurants, how far I had traveled, it was as if I’d laced up my sneakers when I was fifteen and hadn’t stopped running for twenty-five years. When I came home from my run, my mother loved me, as she does best, with her worry: “Marcus, take a break. Marcus, how are you getting paid?” I hugged her. “Don’t worry, Mom,” I said. “Don’t worry.” I went in the kitchen and started prepping a dinner of fish tacos, which I made with one of my favorite
sous-chefs
, my nephew Petrus.

O
N
D
ECEMBER 17, WE OPENED
. Two days later, there was a snowstorm. I tried to put a good spin on things for Maya before I left for work that day. “It’s OK that we’ll be empty,” I said. “It’ll be good. The staff can cook for each other, train more. We need that.” But the restaurant was packed; people didn’t want to leave. It was one of those snowstorms where snow is slapping you in every direction, but inside the Rooster it was all warmth, all love. I didn’t get home that night
until two in the morning. But I walked home, in the thick of the snow, with a huge smile on my face.

I knew then and there that we were going to make it.

Not that I let up. Two weeks after we opened, I was still going to bed every night around 1:30 a.m. and getting up at five. I’d been
living
at the restaurant and I wanted to make sure that everyone on my team knew that if I was being a demanding bastard, it was nothing less than I expected of myself. In Sweden, we do a lot of cross-country skiing. And when you ski, just in the woods, not in a resort, the first skier has to plow. That’s how I think of myself—with the restaurant, with the Harlem dining scene. I’m the guy who has to plow. Sweden is a famously neutral country, but I’m not neutral. I have been a witness to the poor quality of groceries available in Harlem, the lack of healthy food options, the whitewash of New York’s fine-dining scene—in the kitchen, among the staff, and among the guests. I’m activating myself to lead.

I
N 1901, A BIG-BONED, BIG-HEARTED
woman nicknamed Pig Foot Mary came to Harlem from Mississippi with five dollars in savings. She bought a baby carriage and a large boiling pan for three dollars and then spent her remaining two dollars on pig feet. Dressed in a gingham dress, Pig Foot Mary sold pig feet from that baby carriage on the corner of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, just ten blocks north from where the Rooster sits today. Mary’s only goal, she later said, was to make enough money to rent a room in an “old folks’ home for respectable colored people.” But her pig feet were so delectable that, two weeks in, retirement was the farthest thing from Mary’s mind. A month after arriving, Mary married a man named John Dean, who owned a newsstand on the same block. She soon purchased an apartment building for the princely sum of $44,000, then sold it six years later for $72,000. By the time Mary retired, she had a net worth of over $375,000—all from selling pig feet out of a baby carriage. Not bad for a woman who couldn’t read or write.

During the years of Prohibition, rent parties were a popular entertainment
and, again, soul food played a central role. Admission was fifteen cents, but it was always worth it: Big pots of chitterlings and pig feet provided sustenance to those who had come to dance the night away. Corn liquor was made by the jug and sold in half-pint glasses called “shorties.” And at the piano, boogie-woogie played until dawn. Rent parties were attended by anyone who wanted not to be alone on a Saturday night: domestics, Pullman porters, truck drivers, downtown white folks, and out-of-town black folks. As a typical rent party invitation read: