Top Chef opens Restaurant in Newark
The New Jersey city is not the first place you’d expect one of New York’s most recognized chefs to eye for expansion. But it’s exactly where chef and perpetual Harlem booster Marcus Samuelsson will open his next restaurant, Marcus B&P.
At his Manhattan restaurants, Red Rooster and Streetbird, Samuelsson has focused on infusing African-American comfort food with a patina of influences (his Ethiopian background, the barrio’s Mexican community). The 2,250-square-foot Marcus B+P, which opened this week in Newark’s Central Business District, is something of a departure for the chef. The name is a reference to the Swedish concept of “back pocket,” an accessible and casual place. There are some familiar dishes like fried chicken (served with “super ripe” plantain waffles, Escovitch vegetable, and hot honey) and Marcus’s cornbread, but it’s also the first restaurant where Samuelson will make pastas in-house, for dishes like cannelloni stuffed with the Ethiopian chicken dish dorowat. His kitchen will also serve pizzas, including a white clam pie made with ricotta and Calabrian chili, as well as a very Jersey combination of Taylor ham (a.k.a pork roll) with egg and provolone. (Other Jersey influences include the Ironbound Ocean Temporo with piri-piri aioli, named for the city’s famous Portuguese neighborhood.)So, the big question remains: Why New Jersey? The restaurant is actually a partnership between Samuelsson and developer Ron Moelis, a co-owner of Red Rooster whose company L+M Development Partners renovated the Hahne & Co. building that the restaurant calls home.
Restaurants necessarily get brought up in conversations about gentrification. Moelis’ company has been active in affordable housing in the New York, though without not some criticism. The Hahne & Co. building offers luxury rentals, like a 855-square-foot one-bedroom listed for $2,235 a month, but 40 percent of its units are more affordable, like a three bedroom apartment for $1470. It’s also located near the offices of companies like Prudential, as well as Rutgers and Seton Hall law school campuses, all places Samuelson hopes to draw in.
(Taken in part from "Marcus Samuelsson is opening a Neighborhood Hangout in Newark by Chris Crowley)