htaccess redirects in wordpress iste - php

Question

I'm moving a site from static html to the wordpress platform and trying to set up redirects but I can't seem to get it working. The site is at http://slysmidtown.com
What I would like to do is redirect requests for menu.html to /menu/
and redirect all other .html file requests to index.php or just http://slysmidtown.com
this is what I have so far the top line almost works so that the site will load but still requests the html file the rest is written by wordpress
RewriteEngine on
rewriterule ^menu.html(.*)$ http://slysmidtown.com/menu/$1 [r=301,nc]
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Answer 1

You forgot that you need to rewrite it back internally to a file, since Apache doesn't know how to handle /menu/ urls now. To prevent infinite redirects you need to let the redirect only match on an external request:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^(GET|POST)\ /menu\.html\ HTTP
RewriteRule ^ /menu/ [R,L]
RewriteRule ^menu/?$ /menu.html [L]

Answer 2

You had the rule in the wrong place, placing it just after the rewritebase should work/:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
Rewriterule ^menu.html(.*)$ http://slysmidtown.com/menu/$1 [r=301,nc]
Rewriterule ^(.*).html(.*)$ http://slysmidtown.com/ [r=301,nc]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress