Three Dishes with Carl Redding

Carl Redding, Redding’s, Atlantic City, NJ

This new column by Anjali Kumar invites you on a weekly adventure to great restaurants around the world to meet the amazing chefs, mixologists, restaurateurs and sommeliers behind them and the foods that inspired their work today. This week, she sits down with Chef Carl Redding of Redding's in Atlantic City, New Jersey to find out which dishes shaped his cooking style and outlook today.

When Elijah Bass tried to chase his grandson, Carl Redding, out of the family kitchen in Gordon, Alabama, to toughen him up by assigning him, his brothers and his cousins outdoor chores, little could he imagine that Carl would become a US Marine, a baker, and proprietor of a soul food restaurant that would become a Harlem Institution. Now he’s proprietor of a new Atlantic City restaurant, Redding’s, an Institution-in-the making standing tall at the intersection of Soul Food and Southern Cuisine.

Chef Redding first learned commercial cooking at Wilson’s Bakery and Restaurant on 158th St. and Amsterdam Avenue, where he’d started as a dishwasher. In the summers, he was on the family farm cooking, canning, preserving and freezing vegetables and fruit; milking cows, collecting eggs, and helping to slaughter livestock, freezing the meat.

After the Marines and eight years as a personal assistant and Chief of Staff to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Chef Carl opened his first restaurant, Amy Ruth’s, named for his grandmother, on Mother’s Day 1999 with 63 seats and lines of people outside his door on 116th Street, an almost instantaneous hit. Amy Ruth’s drew such notables as George W. Bush, Bill & Hillary Clinton, Michael Jackson, Alicia Keys, and Spike Lee, becoming the epicenter of Harlem, where people met after church and politicos went for their power breakfasts.

Within a year, the New York Daily News proclaimed Chef Carl the first of “21 New Yorkers to Watch in the 21st Century.” A few years later, he sold Amy Ruth’s to open a new version in Connecticut at Foxwoods Resorts Casino, the first soul food/African American restaurant to operate within a casino. In the fall of 2010, he opened outside of the casinos, this time in Atlantic City, to launch Redding’s, a 250-seat family style emporium with a 42-foot bar, featuring moderately-priced traditional and updated Southern food ranging from Fried Chicken and Waffles to BBQ Pigs Feet to Fresh Fried or Steamed Fish to Grilled Steaks and myriad side dishes like his 5-Green Stew. Appetizers and entrees are named for Rev. Al Sharpton, Harry Carson, the football Hall of Fame member, and local religious and civic leaders. Redding’s also offers a decadent bakery and an accommodating lounge area where guests can kick back and comfortably mingle in a more relaxed setting.

Carl Redding

What is the dish that:

1. Inspired your love of food?

When I was a child growing up summer months in the deep south and being able to watch animals and vegetables grow and then harvested. Being able to gather eggs from chickens. Being able to take the milk from cows. And then being able to produce many unbelievable products from all of those things.

2. Is your signature?

The Harlem, NY dish that was created over 60 years ago, "Chicken and Waffles." My waffle mix is made with a special malt base, which makes the waffles fluffier and gives them a golden brown, crisp texture.

3. You cook on your night off?

A piece of Wild Atlantic Salmon, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, and a warm Watermelon Salad with Arugula Salad.

— Written by Anjali Kumar

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