Marcus Samuelsson Has Closed Streetbird Rotisserie

Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s casual hip hop-inspired chicken restaurant Streetbird Rotisserie is dunzo, just over three years since opening in Harlem.

The restaurant at 2149 Frederick Douglass Boulevard, at 116th Street, had closed after this past Sunday, as first reported by the Times. An announcement on the restaurant’s website notes that the space will be going to Carlos and Markisha Swepson of local restaurant BLVD Bistro. A smaller, Madison Square Garden outpost of Streetbird remains open.

Streetbird Rotisserie opened in 2015 after a four year planning process. Like Samuelsson’s Red Rooster, the restaurant’s decor and menu pulled from the neighborhood — complete with an area where waiting diners could listen to stories about Harlem. In a Bloomberg review, Tejal Rao wrote that it had the feel “of a Harlem-themed cafe in Universal Studios.”

As the name suggests, rotisserie chicken played a big role on the menu, but dishes from Chinese, Ethiopian, and Latin cuisines also showed up on the menu, a nod toward the diversity of people in the neighborhood. It has also landed on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list.

But Samuelsson, who’s become a celebrity chef, seems to have kept busy in the last few years, though no longer in Harlem. He’s planted restaurants in Newark and in London; he’s also plotting a big waterfront restaurant in Greenpoint.

• [Off the Menu]