By Jon Schuppe
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
HARLEM — A culinary transformation is underway in Harlem, and 2010 turned out to be a pivotal year.
The most notable development was the Dec. 17 opening of Red Rooster, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s highly anticipated new restaurant on Lenox Avenue.
Samuelsson, who lives in Harlem, has become one of the neighborhood’s most high-profile cheerleaders, appearing at the July opening of Target in East Harlem, flipping the switch on 125th Street’s holiday lights and appearing on advertisements across the city. Longtime residents say they hope his investment will draw even more visitors, and businesses, to the neighborhood.
This year also saw the blossoming of Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Several new restaurants, bars, bakeries and coffee shops — along with luxury condominium towers — opened between West 110th Street and West 125th Street, making it one of the most promising new commercial strips in New York.
The boulevard’s renewal, the result of a 2003 rezoning, remains incomplete, with many storefronts vacant or under construction. But many of those spaces will open with new tenants in 2011, including the new headquarters of Levain Bakery.
Harlem can now also boast a new tenant: Magnolia Bakery. This month, the Greenwich Village cupcake maker signed a 10-year lease for a production facility on Park Avenue. The only catch is Harlem customers won’t be able to walk in and buy anything, since the space will be used to fill online orders.
Harlem almost lost one of its favorite bakeries this year, when the owner of Lee Lee’s Baked Goods announced he was closing in June. A community outcry followed, and, after two weeks in which he "didn’t do nothing," owner Alvin Lee Smalls changed his mind and reopened his doors.
Harlem also held on to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, which nearly became a casualty of Columbia University’s controversial expansion into Manhattanville. Instead, in September, the restaurant moved from West 131st Street to West 125th Street.
Just days earlier, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que was one of three Harlem restaurants featured in the Michein Guide’s 2010 Bib Gourmand list for New York, along with El Paso Taqueria in East Harlem and Zoma on Frederick Douglass Boulevard.
Manhattanville, meanwhile, continued to attract new restaurants. The newest was Bettolona on Broadway, which opened in September.
