Yummy Malaysiana: sour cream cornbread with aleppo

Despite living in New York City, a place where one could theoretically go to some fabulous new restaurant every night and not run out of places to eat for some time, were not big new-hot-thing chasers. When we go out to eat, we want to experience new tastes but also disappear for a couple hours, not ooh and aah over the celebrity at the next table while feeling bad about our clothes. But. Every so often a restaurant gets talked up so much that were unable to resist its magnetism and have to go as soon as humanly possible, and this happened a few weekends ago and Im so glad that it did.

Of course, the Red Rooster isnt just any old restaurant. First, its neither below 14th Street or in Brooklyn, which alone makes it unlike the other 100 restaurants theres been buzz about in recent years. Mostly, though, the food tastes different. The chef, Marcus Samuelsson, was born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden and moved to New York where he fell in love with soul food and manages to blend these influences together into food like weve never tasted before. Ill spare you the point-by-point on the menu, the web is full of gasping Yard Bird and Uptown Steak Frites reviews. Ill only admit that we ordered too much, which we a! lways do when the menu looks so good it is impossible to make decisions. Also, there was cornbread.