Sophia F. Gottfried

Staff Writer, @sophiafgott

Celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson has restaurants in New York City, Bermuda, Chicago and Sweden. And soon, downtown Newark.

Samuelsson’s yet unnamed restaurant is part of the redevelopment of the Hahne & Co. department store, which sat abandoned on Broad Street for decades.

But not anymore. As of last week, the 400,000-square-foot building is open once again, this time as a dining, retail, arts and residential space – and Sameulsson’s spot is the crown jewel of the complex.

“Now that the building is ready we can sort of get to our space, build out a kitchen, build out the programming,” the 47-year-old James Beard Award-winner explained, though one detail he’s already committed to is paying homage to the history of Newark and to the local community: He and his team are currently researching foods of the city’s large Portuguese community and are looking into sourcing from local farms and farmers’ markets, for example.

Samuelsson said he sees similarities between Newark and Harlem, where he opened his acclaimed restaurant Red Rooster in 2010, from the shared “deep roots in theater and the arts and music” to the potential of Newark to be revitalized as Harlem has been. (Jonathan Cortell, vice president of development at L+M, the developer behind the project, said in a statement: "We believe that food and restaurants help anchor our communities and view this restaurant as another step in the transformation of the city.")

The Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised cookbook author also plans to hire Newark residents for the majority of the restaurant’s jobs, including training aspiring cooks: “A young student said to me today, ‘Hey I want to be a chef, but I don’t want to have to always go outside my community’ – today kids are working in Harlem and don’t have to leave Harlem, so maybe three or four years from now, we can say, ‘Hey, you don’t have to leave Newark to become a great chef.’”

Though the restaurateur and television personality, who sported a tailored blazer and colorful newsboy cap to the Jan. 23 ribbon-cutting ceremony, has yet to work out a concept or menu for the restaurant, developer L+M has said it will open later this year.

The new Hahne & Co. site includes 160 apartments, 40 percent of which are affordable units; Samuelsson says prices at his restaurant will reflect this. It’ll be “social and fun dining that is affordable, like what we’ve done in Harlem,” where Samuelsson, after Red Rooster’s success, has also opened Ginny’s Supper Club and Streetbird Rotisserie.

“I came here to start looking [at the space] three years ago when it was just a building,” Samuelsson said while scanning the atrium's sleek new wrought-iron fixtures, gleaming glass skylight and the refurbished original grand staircase. “We’re very excited to be here.”

In addition to the Samuelsson restaurant and apartments, the complex will house Newark’s first Whole Foods Market, a Barnes & Noble, plus office, exhibit and performance space for Rutgers University’s Newark campus.