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" &amp;quot;That potato is perfect,&amp;quot;\u00A0he said. &amp;quot;A restaurant is only as good as its sides. This place does the small things very well.&amp;quot; The marble table\u2014a delicate piece of furniture for a big man like Josh Ozersky\u2014was stacked with plates and brimming with food: cassoulet, crispy chicken schnitzel, goulash, a turkey burger stuffed with Mornay sauce, fried cockscomb, black-truffle wing ball, ostrich tartare, a warm pumpernickel baguette, vanilla butter. There was no place to put the bottle of ros\u00E9 just arriving. A ridiculous array of food and Ozersky was still ordering and talking, mostly about his father the painter, the Victorian writer Thomas Babington Macaulay, Atlantic City, music, and meat. Meat not as food, really, but meat as energy, inspiration, and life. The late-evening light had faded to darkness, and this restaurant\u2014Mountain Bird\u2014was just about the only light on the block, an uninviting stretch of 145th Street, in Harlem. Many of the commercial spaces in the neighborhood have been turned into storefront churches, but the storefront churches were all dark and devoid of the spirit on a Thursday night in late spring 2014. The church was here, in this tiny, glowing bistro, the Reverend Ozersky officiating. &amp;quot;The cassoulet here is better than any I have had in Paris,&amp;quot; he said. And he also talked about how the goodness in that little room\u2014French lanterns and delicate bone-china plates embossed with &amp;quot;MB&amp;quot; and white honeycomb tiles spelling out MOUNTAIN BIRD on the black floor\u2014was just as important to the neighborhood as the food that came out of its kitchen. On this dark block, Mountain Bird, with its loving attention to every part of every bird, abided. That evening became one of those five-hour dinners, one of those exalted evenings in which big thoughts are thunk and you cherish the new friends who inspired you to think them and make solemn oaths to do it again soon. Maybe next Thursday? An evening that would have been spoiled if the eating hadn&amp;#039;t been good but was made absolutely historic because it was. Why, they&amp;#039;ll write books about this evening! Walk that stretch of 145th Street now and you can still look through the lace curtains and almost see Ozersky bowing theatrically in gratitude before the chef, Kenichi Tajima, and his wife, Keiko, who created Mountain Bird. The nineteen-seat restaurant, he declared over dessert, would make his list of the Best New Restaurants in America for 2014. But before he would get the chance, Mountain Bird was gone. And so was Josh Ozersky. A restaurant becomes a hit and sometimes the landlord thinks, Great, let&amp;#039;s hike the rent. That sent Mountain Bird in search of another kitchen-ready spot uptown and infuriated Josh. He saw the situation as calamitous not just because Tajima&amp;#039;s food was lost to the world but also because a block in Central Harlem had lost its center of gravity. And so it was with great joy that he greeted the news that Kenichi and Keiko had found a new spot, on another block uptown that needed a little love, and Mountain Bird would live on. When it reopened in April, ten months after leaving the spot on 145th Street, he took it as a sign, and solemn oaths were made for another beautiful Thursday evening. He was there, of course, in a fashion. Glasses were raised, remembrances made, and where two or more gather with meat on the table, the spirit of Ozersky is never far away. Josh would have loved the new tiny, glowing Mountain Bird on 110th and Second Avenue, with its new full bar and head-to-toe bird menu, the very same one that he had so fully embraced that night in Harlem. &amp;quot;This potato!&amp;quot; you can hear him say. &amp;quot;These gizzards! Who has ever thought to do this with duck? This isn&amp;#039;t a restaurant. This is art.&amp;quot; 251 East 110th Street; 212-744-4422, ext. 1 Published in the November 2015 issue. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a38818/mountain-bird/>