One Harlem restaurant owner isn’t just honoring female chefs for Black History Month, he’s creating a menu especially inspired by them.
Marcus Samuelsson, founder of Red Rooster, has always crafted a special list of foods for February, but this year, he was particularly moved by women thanks to the ladies in his own professional kitchen.
After recognizing his team’s amazingness, he realized he wanted “to acknowledge the goddesses from the past, present, and future.”
That’s why he and his chef de cuisine, Adrienne Cheatham, prepared a $62, five-course dinner that celebrates a different chef with each dish.
The meal includes broiled oysters that applaud Edna Lewis, charred octopus that praises CJ Grant, blackened catfish that gives kudos to Leah Chase, beer-braised pork belly that pays homage to Lena Richard and coconut rice pudding that salutes Nyesha Arrington.
“We did a lot of research for this,” Cheatham explained. “I hope that diners realize that every chef contributes to cuisine in a different way. Some of these women contributed fifty or a hundred years ago, and some still contribute by changing texture, by adding something, by applying a new technique to make something more modern. What’s on each plate is from hundreds of years of hard work that inspires us still.”
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