Real estate developers used to wait for restaurants to illuminate the sidewalks before they’d start investing in a neighborhood. They don’t wait anymore. If there’s no Florent or Schiller’s Liquor Bar around, they simply have one built, synchronizing the opening with the move-in date of the first new apartments.

This is the tactic being used by Hudson Yards, the glass-and-steel mountain range rising above a one-time dining wasteland where soon not just restaurants but an entire “restaurant collection” will flourish, including new projects from David Chang, José Andrés and others, all “curated” by Thomas Keller. And it is the approach taken by Henry Hall, a tower of rental apartments just north of Hudson Yards on West 38th Street. To give the place the atmosphere and the hangout opportunities of a boutique hotel, Henry Hall has turned its first two floors over to a wine shop, a cocktail lounge, a private dining room and a restaurant.

I am telling you all this because that restaurant, Legacy Records, is unusually good and very popular and if somebody invites you there, you should know why you are having dinner down the street from the Javits Convention Center and a stable where Central Park carriage horses go to be hosed down at night. And you will also know why Legacy Records seems eager to suggest that it has local roots — so eager that it has essentially ginned up a history for itself that brings together sloppy research with a superficial tribute to black culture. It’s not a combination that will appeal to everybody.

Like the bar and the wine store, Legacy Records is run by Delicious Hospitality, the company behind Pasquale Jones and Charlie Bird. The menu, as it is in those two restaurants, is essentially Italian, but less rustic and more expensive. This is the first time the group has routinely charged more than $30, and as much as $46, for main courses. (The prices, like the ones at Pasquale Jones but not Charlie Bird, include service.)