The high cost of doing business in New York takes a toll on many restaurants in the long run, but it can also lead to compromises whose shortcomings become part of the fun — for diners, at least.
If Darryl and Melissa Burnette had been able to afford to rent a space bigger than 275 square feet for their restaurant, Belle Harlem, Mr. Burnette might do the cooking behind a wall instead of behind a counter. Ms. Burnette, his wife and business partner, might spend all night going in and out a swinging kitchen door instead of paying attention to the customers sitting at the 12 seats in the restaurant’s single room.
At this point, after three years in business, Belle Harlem might be run by employees, and the Burnettes might come in a few times a week to keep an eye on things. Instead they have a paid staff of one. His name is Alex Geudelekian. He was eating dinner there one night, noticed that the weeds were growing up around Mr. Burnette’s ankles, asked if he needed help, and has been the sous-chef ever since.
CreditDaniel Krieger for The New York Times
The smell of foie gras gravy with duck breast being seared on one of the three induction burners might not rush up to meet you when you step through the door, on the opposite side of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard from Striver’s Row. You might not hear the hiss of chicken being fried inside buttermilk batter before it is arranged between standing partitions of pizzelle and tied together by an amber river of truffled maple syrup warmed with jalapeños and bananas.
If you didn’t hear the low roar of a Searzall torch as it warms a plate and then melts and browns a patch of Cheddar, you might not know that you’re about to be served Mr. Burnette’s cheese-steak crostini. (These are small toasts stacked with seared filet and melted cheese, and in between are onions that have been caramelized until they’re sweet enough to be a dessert topping. The Cheddar would cause every Philadelphian who lives within 10 blocks of East Passyunk Avenue to pick up the nearest blunt object, but it makes a certain amount of sense when you taste it.)
Some of Belle Harlem’s space limitations are, in fact, a little constricting. When the place is full, some customers have to ride sidesaddle, their knees angled away from the counter, because if they faced it head-on they’d cut off the narrow path to the restroom in the back.
But 275 square feet are what the Burnettes have to work with, and they have made this shallow sliver into something rare not just in Harlem but in all Manhattan.
One of the peculiarities of dining in the city, circa 2019, is that the more high-functioning a restaurant is, the less likely you are to encounter a proprietor. There are exceptions, of course, but often the most successful restaurateurs are very busy people, so they leave their dining rooms in the hands of professional managers.
Proprietors aren’t always as smooth as professionals, but they are as attuned to what goes on in their dining rooms as new parents are to the noises coming from a bassinet. I never quite felt as if I were attending a dinner party in the Burnettes’ apartment, which is the feeling they say they’re going for, but I always knew I was in a place that somebody cared about.
Their original plan was to feed everyone the same meal — a tasting menu. “We found out pretty quickly Harlem wasn’t ready,” Mr. Burnette said in an interview.
How quickly?
“We tried one night.”
Belle Harlem rolled out an à la carte menu the next day. It stuck.
The first half is given to smaller plates, although one of the hallmarks of the restaurant is that the Burnettes don’t serve anything truly small. They want you to eat. Two people could get away with ordering one main course and two appetizers, though I’d urge anyone going to Belle Harlem not to overlook dessert.
These introductory dishes are where Mr. Burnette takes casual American vernacular food like chicken and waffles out for a stroll. His fried chicken has a convoluted, frilly crust, with plenty of golden surface area for the jalapeño-banana syrup to get lost in. The pizzelles are a new idea of his, replacing the regular waffles he used to make, and they work best when he cooks them to a dark crisp.
This is also where you’ll find the cheese-steak crostini, as well as spring rolls stuffed with macaroni and cheese — kid food in a fried shell, yes, but a bacon marmalade with fresh dill makes it unexpectedly complex, a chef’s dish.
The bottom of the menu is more substantial: The pan-seared, smoked pork tenderloin, for instance, is bigger than what usually crosses a 12-seat tasting counter. This month, Mr. Burnette is laying the barrels of pork over a cherry compote with basil leaves, with a few snap peas for added sweetness. He brings a keen sense of what to do with ingredients as they come into season to the vegetables he grows on the roof of the Burnettes’ apartment building, a block away.
The tiny yields of an urban garden wouldn’t satisfy a larger restaurant, but they can shuffle right onto the menu at Belle Harlem, and shuffle off again when they’re all gone. This month, there are thin bands of zucchini under the beef tenderloin, and young, soft favas around the lobster salad. There are more favas over pan-seared dorade and garden chives, with the almost transparently thin noodles tossed with butter and cream and tucked under the fish fillet.
Mr. Burnette, who is black and who grew up in rural southwestern Virginia, has said he worked up the nerve to move north for culinary school after seeing the chef Marcus Samuelsson on television. (“I thought, hell, if he could do it, I could do it, too.”)
Sometimes today, in his restaurant less than a mile away from Mr. Samuelsson’s Red Rooster Harlem, he reaches back to his childhood for ideas. A dessert in a glass called the Triflin’ Ho-Ho is an acknowledged homage to Hostess cakes, although there is an English trifle in the mix, too, as well as a trace of Spice Market, where Mr. Burnette once worked. The chocolate in the broken shards of cake pulses, intriguingly, with Urfa pepper; its heat rubs up against the passion-fruit cream, brandied cherries and whipped cream that fill the glass.
A year ago, Belle Harlem eliminated tips and raised prices. If you take that into account, check totals can still seem high, especially if you happen to be served pale, limp housemade potato chips or a $42 duck breast with a bitter arugula sauce and a poached pear that tastes like alcohol. The margins must be tight. At times you almost hear them squeak, as when Ms. Burnette anxiously reminds you that you were a few minutes late and suggests you order quickly so she can turn the seat in time for the next reservation.
A professional manager might have brought a more soothing manner to the exchange. But a manager might not be as genuinely happy to see a party of three walk in without a reservation just when three seats had opened up, and might not smile as widely when told that the sparkling rosé is fantastic with the lobster salad, and would she mind pouring another glass?
No, she doesn’t mind at all.
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