As if glowing reviews in the Times and the Post weren't enough good news for chef Marcus Samuelsson's Harlem restaurant Red Rooster, now it is set to join the ranks of Il Mulino and Blue Hill at Stone Barns with an Obama Presidential seal of approval. Later this month the President will be hosting a small "six-table, high-dollar" fundraiser at the Lenox Avenue restaurant with the $30,800-a-head tickets going directly into the DNC's coffers—those seats are almost half the cost of a recently sold private dinner for ten at Babbo!
After the dinner Obama will host an invite-only, "Thank You Reception with President Obama," at the Studio Museum on 125th Street that will not be used to solicit money.
The Secret Service won't even have to do that many background checks, as this won't be the first time Samuelsson will cook for Obama. He was the chef at the President's first State Dinner (which was sadly overshadowed by a certain party-crashing couple).
The mutli-culti Obama, who is about to start revving up his outreach for the 2012 elections, should fit in well at Red Rooster, about which Sam Sifton at the Times gushed last week:"The glory of the Red Rooster is that everyone really is there, actually making the scene: black and white, Asian and Latino, straight and gay, young and old."
