Red Rooster Harlem

Marcus Samuelsson opened Red Rooster on Lenox Avenue in 2010 as a comfort-food restaurant that would hire from, cook for, and sound like Harlem, and the bi-level room has held that line ever since. Upstairs is loud in the best way — a long bar, shelves of books and art by neighborhood makers, fried yardbird and cornbread moving past on trays. Downstairs, Ginny's Supper Club runs music programming that recalls the basement clubs of an earlier Harlem.

It is a restaurant built for an evening rather than a meal: come early for a drink at the bar, stay through dinner, and see what is playing downstairs. Sunday brunch is its own institution, and the room draws an easy mix of regulars, dates, and visitors who did their homework.