IT’S the dining version of the scene where the Gale house judders down in Oz. Monochrome up until that point, the world is suddenly, gorgeously Technicolor once Dorothy opens the door.

On any Friday night at Red Rooster, the crowd is likely to encompass not only elements of New York’s “gorgeous mosaic” but also David Dinkins, the former mayor who coined the phrase. There, either at the 76-seat restaurant, the 24 seats at communal tables near the bar, the 20-seat bar itself or the 40-seat sidewalk cafe, neighborhood bankers rub elbows with Bill Clinton; Nora Ephron might be seated alongside Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum; Alicia Keys is likely to be found in a corner with Ralph and Ricky Lauren at a table bracketing her left side and a group of local church ladies on her right.

That, in a sense, is a typical experience at Red Rooster, the door onto Harlem opened by the celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson at the end of last year.

Smack on Lenox Avenue just north of 125th Street, and with glamorous neighbors like Marshalls, Staples and CVS, the place almost instantly became a destination not just for those seeking soul food cooked with a Swedish accent, but for people with an appetite for a dining experience reflective of the New York Grace Paley once lauded for its “chromatic dispersion.” Very likely it was the latter that moved Barack Obama to choose Red Rooster as the spot for a $30,800-a-plate fund-raising dinner for the Democratic National Committee in March.

And, after all, there had to be someplace besides certain sections of hipster Brooklyn where — as Sam Sifton, the restaurant critic of The New York Times, pointed out in a review awarding Red Rooster two stars — the servers, the crowd and the atmosphere all come together to represent the “polyglot, diverse” city that has historically been “a shining beacon for people of all races.” ...

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