Russell Jackson will operate Reverence Phoenix until the end of October.
Photo: Mark C. Warner
Tasting menus, even at their best, can feel like a trap. If a couple of dishes in a long procession begin to waver, the fuss, formality, and length (not to mention the cost) of a meal become flaws, not features. This is not the case at Reverence Phoenix, the centerpiece of the new Unity Market at the top of Central Park, which takes place every Saturday through October 31. You take a spot at a stand-up table in a tent overlooking the Harlem Meer and whip through a series of dishes assembled in a tiny, hyperefficient kitchen and served with a straightforward explanation of components: “corn custard, trout roe, mini tomato salad, and nasturtiums.” The cost is $55, unless you’ve opted for nonalcoholic beverage pairing for an extra $35. The cooking displays the rigor of haute cuisine — a portable grill sits alongside a sous-vide bath — but the experience is more like high-end picnic with glass vases filled with herbs lined up amid the single-setting compostable flatware and bowls.
Russell Jackson — standing by to engage in a black ball cap and high-tops — previously ran the brick-and-mortar Reverence in Harlem and built a following for his emphasis on food over fine-dining conventions. Here, he will not only explain how the ballotine of French hen was put together but offer to sell you the chicken and prep it if you want to come back next week and pick it up from his Provisions/Boucherie kiosk. (He also sells beef, sausage, and other meats plus South Carolina rice from his favorite purveyors as well as a line of fermented products and condiments like Saint Fauci hot sauce.) And if you like any of the produce in his dishes, aside from the herbs he grows himself at his home in Washington Heights, he will direct you to the Norwich Meadows stand just steps away. (One of his coups in curating this market in collaboration with the Central Park Conservancy was enlisting the farm that supplies so many of the highest-end restaurants in the city.)
“Some chefs just want to cook,” Jackson says. “I like to feed people and see the reactions.” He grew up in a Southern California beach town and learned to cook and run restaurants in that state, so his style is his own. “I used to eat at Chez Panisse every Sunday. Dominique Crenn is godmother to my son.” He also writes a column for Kolor “to connect African-American food to what I do and give a greater idea of chefs of color than the pretty narrow view.”
The Reverence Phoenix setup in the park.
Photo: Reverence NYC Hospitality Group
Despite my resistance to tasting menus, I booked a spot, using Tock, after reading a review in the Amsterdam News — not least because there was no “your table is not ready” nonsense when I got there early. It was such an uplifting experience that I went back a few Saturdays later to watch how Reverence Phoenix and Unity Market all come together for a few hours once a week.
By 8:30 a.m., the chef and a helper were wrestling the 30-by-10-foot tent in place and anchoring it and setting up the kitchen and kiosk. Jackson and his crew of three rolled in coolers full of prepped ingredients and drinks to put on what is almost a cooking show in the park. (Jackson was a contestant on both Food Network Star and America’s Culinary Cup, so passersby do tend to stop to request photos with him.)
While Reverence Phoenix takes form, with banners out front and on 110th Street, other vendors roll in and set up on the asphalt on a bend in the road into the park at Farmers Gate. All were chosen by Jackson to serve one of the more economically and racially diverse neighborhoods in the city, so you can pick up Harlem honey from BeeFlavored, focaccia and muffins from Artisanal Bakes by Chef Jessica, tamales and burritos from La Palapa in the East Village, and West African dishes from Gracey’s Culinary Specialties from the Bronx, among other products. Sugar Hill Creamery is one of the anchors of the market.
Jackson made a point to deviate from the city’s Greenmarkets, which he says have a different audience: “Union Square and Grand Army Plaza are hardcore, institution-level products built around chefs and tourists and locals. There’s nothing else around here — everything’s haphazard. I have a chance to make a difference in my community.”
Phoenix meals always start with a small selection of fermented vegetables like carrots and beets; dessert might be a madeleine made with fig leaves or a cornbread-miso blondie with big chunks of Tcho chocolate. Jackson posts each week’s menu on Instagram on Thursday.
Throughout the day, I saw guests wander for Petit Provisions’ takeaway dish — corn over miso-tofu crema and black-barley mole topped with Mexican tarragon and paired with grilled pain de mie — with others coming from a different farmers’ market to check the menu and deciding to stay. (Reservations are not required.) Two joggers stopped to check the menu and said, “We live four blocks away — how did we never know about this?”
Late in the day, Jackson was joined by his Bulgarian wife, with whom he owns a farm in her home country, and 7-year-old son, Bowie, who makes the paper fans sold at the stand-up table as “exotic cooling implements.” They and his crew all took apart the restaurant and kitchen around 4 p.m., right down to the stainless-steel sink hooked up to a fire hydrant; everything went back in storage in a shipping container hidden in the trees nearby.
Jackson says he originally thought of opening only Provisions in the park but “decided to go whole hog and make something truly unique.” He crowd-funded Phoenix, including with contributions from J. Lohr Vineyards. “It’s a spectacular location; people come by and see it and next week they’re in the reservation book. People think we’re a food concession. But Phoenix is a standing restaurant.” And, after it closes on October 31, it will be back next season.
EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.
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Dining and Cooking