Marcus Samuelsson

Chef, restaurateur, and author
Headshot of a man.
Photo by Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Music Credit: Chummy Evening B written and performed by Lobo Loco; Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Marcus Samuelsson: I always say, like, the menu at Red Rooster is really decided by Harlem. Obviously we cook it, but what I mean by that is, I would say forty percent of the menu is always inspired by the African-American migration. It's the soul, it's the base, it's the core of our restaurant.> Jo Reed: That’s Marcus Samuelsson, an award-winning chef, restauranteur, and cookbook author.  And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. Marcus Samuelsson is an internationally-acclaimed chef who is in the middle of a legendary career. Born in Ethiopia and adopted by Swedish parents, Samuelsson trained as a chef in Stockholm, Switzerland and France. At 24, he became executive chef of Aquavit in New York City, and soon after that became the youngest ever to receive a three-star restaurant review from The New York Times. Then in 2003, the James Beard Foundation named Marcus Samuelsson New York City's Best Chef. Marcus served as guest chef at the White House under the Obama administration, where he planned and executed the president's first state dinner, which honored India's prime minister and 400 guests.  He’s often seen on celebrity cooking shows like Top Chef, Chopped, and Iron Chef.  Samuelsson competed against 21 other chefs in the Bravo TV Series Top Chef Masters, winning the competition and donating the $115,000 prize to UNICEF, an organization he’s long been associated with.   Marcus Samuelsson also supports Careers through Culinary Arts Program, or C-CAP which provides career opportunities in the restaurant industries for under-served youth. Samuelsson owns a number of restaurants around the world. His first, and the one closest to his heart is the wildly successful Red Rooster Restaurant in Harlem. And on top of all of that, Marcus Samuelsson has also written award-winning cookbooks and has just released another called Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem.   Food has clearly been a driving passion in Samuelsson’s life, which he traces it back to his family in Sweden. Marcus Samuelsson:  On my dad’s side, they were all fisherman. So every summer when school was out, we went up to the village of Smögen on the west coast of Sweden. And we were fishing from June to August. And not just fishing, because once you’re done with the fish you’ve got to clean the boat and then you’ve got to also take care of the mackerel and the crab and the lobster and the cod. And that led me to preparing food, whether we smoked it, whether we cured it, whether we cooked it. And on my grandmother’s side, she cooked every day home cooked meals. I’ve never been to her house and the first thing that hits you is the smell of food, whether it’s chicken stock, chicken soup on in the kitchen. Whether it’s fresh mushrooms that’s been picked or berries on the kitchen table that needs to be picked. There was always a season for something. Jo Reed:  And you decided to cook professionally and you make it clear that you have to give it everything. And basically sublimate yourself for a while to move through that rigid training and it really was quite rigid. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to describe what it was like being in those kitchens and the people you worked with there. Marcus Samuelsson:  I mean my training is something that I still go off every day of my life because what I really got-- of course I got to learn how to behave in a kitchen and be in a kitchen. But more than anything I learned about to deal with different situations. Someone said something to you in French, the next person spoke German to you. The next person gave you a different challenge.  I was in a many diverse environments, all involving food and hospitality. It was all done at a very high level. It was all done with guest is number one. And it was all done on the teamwork and the hierarchy of the kitchen cannot be broken. Jo Reed:  During that time I’m curious about your own creative process, how was it operating then? How was that working? Marcus Samuelsson:  Well, my creative process is the notepad that I’ve had with me through all of my life, because at that point there was no creative outlet for me. I was a number as a commis ...  Jo Reed: And a commis is like an apprentice chef? Like a chef-in-training? Marcus Samuelsson: Yeah, and every year they had about 60 commis come in, 20 got fired, 40 got to stay. But no one really asked you, “Hey, does anyone have an idea?”  That wasn’t the time. It was not the time for me to do that. The time for me there was to be a very committed commis that can deal with the task at hand. On my spare time, that’s when it was the outlet for me to be creative. So very often on our days off we cooked. And it could be the Malaysian roommate that wanted to know more about Swedish sherry or it could be our friend from South Africa that brought up a dish from Cape Town. So it was these potluck dinners that we all as chefs and commis, you know, we played cards, ate, drank and we’re twenty-one and you did stupid stuff. But it was through food, but also the narrative where we came from. So those were our creative outlets. And we started to ask questions, what if I mixed this Malaysian curry with grilled turbot?  Simple things like that. Everything didn’t work but it was really <inaudible> you started to think about whoa the world is a smaller place. What if I mix? Jo Reed:  And I’m interested in this because, obviously, there was a skill set that has to develop if you’re going to cook professionally. Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah. Jo Reed:  But as with other-- many other arts there also has to be a natural ability as well and somehow combining those two things and knowing when to let one rest, as you say, when you were in training. And then when to shine the spotlight on it. Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah. I mean I think that cooking is a constant dialog between artistry, craftsmanship, and also a long marathon, right? Cooking is every day. So it’s a marathon. It’s a brutal long sport in that sense. Right?  But you also get better as a craftsman if you stay on it. And you’ve got to make sure that you don’t crank it so hard so you kill your artistry. That balance is very different for each person. Jo Reed:  It’s like theater in some ways because you have to get up there every day and it’s so physically taxing. I think often people don’t quite realize what it’s like to be in that hot kitchen. Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah. But it’s also a wonderful place of camaraderie, family. When I think about your family, your tribe, cooking is a tribe. It’s tribal. You could have completely different starting points in life, completely different religions or languages or political views. But in a kitchen you’re coming together because you need one another. Jo Reed: You were executive chef at Aquavit when you were 24. This was a very famous restaurant. How nervous were you?  Marcus Samuelsson:  I was nervous because Aquavit-- the idea of Aquavit for me was how known Aquavit was in Scandinavia and I didn’t want to be the one that dragged it down or anything. That made me nervous. But also no one operates well when they’re nervous every day. You have to kind of live under this confident time where you feel like “I can do this.” And even if I didn’t know everything about being a chef, I knew how to work hard. And I knew-- I had a vision of how I wanted my food to taste like.  And I went back to my times in Japan or Singapore or France. And I knew that I wanted to pickle and preserve and smoke and use seafood and game as a cornerstone of any Scandinavian cook. But also with New York and New York City gave me this allowance to be more global with my flavors. So I had this idea that I think we could start the new Scandinavian cooking for me through my lens. And that’s what we did. Jo Reed:  I’d love to have you talk about developing a recipe and we can go to Red Rooster. And something that we all know like cornbread or fried chicken… Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah. Jo Reed:  I’ve never tasted either in the way that you made it. And I’m just curious how you develop that? Marcus Samuelsson:  Well, you know, I have a lot of respect for what came before me. Just as much as I respected Gravlax in Aquavit and herring the traditions of this. Obviously, I grew up with those two so I had a very clear tone of what I wanted. But at Aquavit maybe my Gravlax was cured with different spices and we did purple mustards instead. Right? Cornbread and fried chicken was nothing I grew up with. So I had to come-- I lived in Harlem for a long time before I opened the restaurant and I tasted fried chicken from Sylvia’s, from Charles, from Gabriel, from all of the places. So I knew my-- what I wanted the cornbread and fried chicken to taste like. And there needed to be something that the average guest could recognize. But then also there needed to be a left turn that made it ours. So very clearly in the beginning I said “Okay, all of our fried chicken is going to be done dark meat, bone in.” That gives us already half of the fried chicken in Harlem without-- they’re now different than that. Then we marinade it different. So, how we process the bird is different. And then the flour mixture and then the spice mixture. Those are sort of the one thing that you can control. Then, of course, you can control the bird size. So, I picked a bird that is not too big, because I don’t want too much water content. So I look at it very much from a traditional point of view. But then also how can I improve from there. Right? And cornbread the same thing. Like I wanted this idea that it was sweet almost like a pound cake, but yet salty so it would work in this sweet and savory section. Right? So that’s just by tasting a lot. And a lot of the food is inspired by the migration. I didn’t grow up through that. That’s not my experience, but I was inspired but it. But the fact that I didn’t grow up around it, allows us to reference it, but not cook exactly like if I would have been from Virginia, or if I would have been from North Carolina. Jo Reed: Now, what goes into making an excellent neighborhood restaurant that’s a first class dining experience? But it’s still a neighborhood restaurant. Again, that’s a juggling act. Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah, I mean, I think American food and urban American food if you think about the cities, when I came to the States, you know, you basically had New York, San Francisco, Chicago that had incredible food. But, now every city in America has really good food and that’s fantastic. And so the development of neighborhood restaurant over the last fifteen years has been incredible. So that the guests, the consumer demands good food wherever they live, whether they live in Orlando, or they live in Berkeley. Right? And that’s great. So, we knew that the quality of the guests and the foods were there. So now it was really, okay, how do we create trust from the neighborhood and the community? And that for me came down to allowing walk-ins to come in, because pretty quickly we realized we had three customers.  We had the visitor that was from either Kansas or Stockholm or Paris, and they very much booked Red Rooster online that third day, second day when they’re in New York.  Then you had the New Yorker that was still pretty traditional that called or maybe booked online but it was a night out. We’re going up town and we might go to the Studio Museum or the Apollo. And then thirdly it was the Harlemite that said, “Hey, this is my neighborhood. I’m not making a reservation in my own neighborhood. Why would I do that?” Which perfectly makes sense. Right? So, it was really about understanding the three behavior of customers and allowing all three to be celebrated at the same time. Jo Reed:  What goes in to putting an entire menu together? Marcus Samuelsson: Well…I always say like the menu of Red Rooster is really decided by Harlem. Obviously, we cook it. But what I mean with that is that I would say 40 percent of the menu is always inspired by the African-American migration. It’s the soul-- it’s the base of-- it’s the core of our restaurant. Forty to fifty percent has that inspiration. It’s Harlem. It should have. Then as Harlem is moving constantly El Bario east of us, Puerto Rican based but also Mexican now. So there are a lot of dishes that has both Puerto Rican influence, but also Mexican influence. Then Harlem is also a place for immigrants, other immigrants. So, I’m an immigrant. So, a lot of the food has inspiration from immigrants like there’s a West African community in Harlem. There’s a Jewish community in Harlem. There’s always been an Italian American community in Harlem. That’s why we always have several dishes that has an Italian spin on it. So that is how I think through the menu and constantly juxtaposition these things. Jo Reed:  Physically the way Red Rooster looks. There was a look that you were going for. If you want to go out for a dining experience, it is a perfectly logical place to go. And if you want to go in and sit down and have a meal, it’s a perfectly logical place to go. What were you thinking when you put it together? Marcus Samuelsson:  I thought a lot about Lenox Avenue and how we can celebrate this iconic boulevard. And I wanted the kitchen to be the theater, so the stage that pulls you in. So there’s light, there’s open fire that you see whether you’re outside Lenox and looking in. So the focal points are really the big bar. So it says, “Hey, yeah, you’re welcome.” And it’s not a service bar. It’s a bar that whether you have a ginger ale or a cocktail in the middle of the day you are welcome. And so it’s a moving piece, right. The bar is big. And things happening. And then you come into the dining room and you constantly-- there’s a dialog of energy, people going downstairs to the supper club. So it’s very transparent. It’s not-- when I started working in restaurants everything was closed off. You were not supposed to see the kitchen. The dining room was "behind the curtain" so to speak. The service bar was over here. Everything was hush-hush you’re not supposed to see. So we built the opposite of that. We built a very transparent restaurant where you can see the chefs. You can see into the dish wash pit. And you can constantly be connected to the energy in the bar. Jo Reed:  Red Rooster also has live music every night. Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah. Jo Reed: And you also have art that changes regularly. What went into that decision? Marcus Samuelsson: I feel like we’re inspired by Harlem. And when I think about Harlem as a culture, iconic neighborhood, music and art, it’s very upfront and centered. Our art and our music it’s not based on what’s popular. It’s part of the piece. Right now, we have an art exhibit by Ms. Lana Turner that is her clothing exhibit, clothing that she’s been wearing for the last forty years. She’s a major figure in our community so it fits. Then after that we’re going to go into Gordon Parks. But we also have art from Ebony Patterson, to Lorna Simpson to just iconic figures that’s been part of the Harlem artistic scene for a long, long, long time whether they worked at Studio Museum or they sold art down the street. Musically, same thing. You know, when we walk in a neighborhood where so much of coming to the Apollo, coming to Harlem to play and perform was a big deal it still is a big deal. So, to honor that I felt like having the music experience really sets the tone on how you dine and celebrate in this place. We’re competing with different things today that we didn’t compete with before. The attention span of people not being on their smartphones. So sometimes you need an interruption like music set. When you dine with us put your phone down, be social, be seen, and talk to your neighbor. Jo Reed:  And I have to say I did not see a smartphone out last night. Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah, no. We have a phone both downstairs. So if you want to do it, go downstairs in the phone booth. Jo Reed: You know, I sat at the chef’s table, so I could see straight into the kitchen, and when the music came on, I saw that not just the customers, but the floor staff and the kitchen staff immediately started moving and nodding to the music, as they worked.  Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah, you mentioned it before theater and restaurant are hand in hand. And that’s why theater people very often work in restaurant and they’re fabulous at it because it’s just another stage. So I think that allowing our guests, and allowing our staff to enjoy all experiences is important because we want to be an upbeat place.  Days like yesterday it’s hard days. It’s hot. It’s July in New York. It’s rainy and stormy. But once you’re inside it doesn’t matter. You’re welcome. You come in. Forget all of your troubles of the day and start celebrating. Jo Reed:  When you were coming up, having a black executive chef was far and few between. Marcus Samuelsson:  Still is! Jo Reed: Still is.  And so I’m wondering, now that you’re in a position with multiple restaurants what you can do and do do to try, you know, to tip the balance at least a little bit. Marcus Samuelsson:  Well, I mean, I’ve gone from being the mentee to the mentor and that relationship is very important and say “ What can we provide?” So I do that in several facets, right. Multi restaurant is one way to provide multiple places for young people of color, young women of color, young chefs in general to get a chance to be exposed. Number two, C-CAP, Careers through Culinary Arts, working really, really hard making sure that inner city schools gets into our field. It’s a great field. And then constantly being a restaurant of teaching, right. And giving opportunities. So young Chef Tristan that is there works with us, he just came back from working six months in Sweden. We’re sending another kid that never had a passport to work in a restaurant in Bermuda. You know, give these guys a year or eighteen months or so and they’re going to become executive chefs. So what comes out of Red Rooster is just as important as what goes into the Red Rooster. And being in Harlem I feel like it’s a perfect platform to train and focus on youth and talent, but specifically young, inner city chefs of color and give them the platform and the opportunity to become chefs. Now, if they don’t make it at least you can pull them back in and say, hey, here’s a second opportunity. Then it’s really up them. But it says two messages:  hey, here’s a place to aspire to; and here’s a place of learning. And the more we have of that, the better. Jo Reed:  And I have to ask you because of the way you were trained where it was “Chef!” and a rigid hierarchy, how do you run your kitchen? Marcus Samuelsson:  Well, I mean, I’m responsible for like 165 employees at the restaurant and 700 total in all of the restaurants, so hierarchy is important. You can’t run it the way I was coming up and that’s a good thing. You know. We don’t throw pots and pans at our junior young cooks anymore. No one gets punched in the walk-ins any more. And I don’t suggest that those things were great stuff. I’m glad that that stuff is sort of the dark days of running a kitchen like that are behind us. But discipline and being focused in a kitchen will always be important because it’s a dangerous workplace. When stuff is coming out of that fryer it’s hot. When something comes out of a steamer, you have to stay behind because it’s hot. So part of that hierarchy is there because it’s a very dangerous workplace, where people have different skill sets and experiences are working in a very fast pace. And the only way to do that is to have one boss. Jo Reed:  You have 700 employees, you say. Marcus Samuelsson:  About. Jo Reed:  About. Yeah.  How, do you keep the focus -- they’re putting out food in your name. How do you make sure that that's a first class dining experience? Marcus Samuelsson:  Well, it’s very hard. But first of all I don’t do it by myself. There is teamwork. Anybody that does what we do, the first thing they would say is "I am no one without my team." So then it’s about creating environments that incredible talented team member wants to work within because it’s a diverse environment. Because it’s fun. Because it’s energetic. Because it’s cross borders. Because it’s uplifting. Because hopefully what we do brings out the best of each other when we make mistakes. All of those things because it’s about culture. Because it’s about people. Because it’s about hospitality. That’s what we do whether it’s in London or Stockholm or Gothenburg or Bermuda or Harlem. So my team in Stockholm is led by other people that have worked at Red Rooster.  Jo Reed:  And what about you?  How often can you get in the kitchen and cook? Marcus Samuelsson:  I try to spend half my time in the kitchen. It’s, obviously, very hard but I also have to trust the training process. Is there anything I want <inaudible> at Red Rooster to fight through themselves because it’s part of their learning. So you have to trust the process that you put into place. And that is the most important thing, you know, our chef at this point for me is to training, training, training. Having them go through adversity which every chef is going to go through. And then come out of that like “ Hmm, actually, I know how to solve that now because I have the support from the team.” And “I made a mistake here. But, you know, what I’m not going to make that mistake again.” I loved to talk to the chefs about “That special didn’t work. Boy, were we wrong.”  But this is where we came out of instead, and that’s much better. Some of the best dishes ever in the history of cooking comes out of mistakes. We have to remember that. Jo Reed:  Yeah, of course. You're a chef with such rigorous training. How do you balance your creativity with that rigor? How does that work together? Marcus Samuelsson: Well, I wouldn’t be the person I am without creativity. And it’s very challenging, but it’s also what makes life so good and sticky. There’s a couple of processes that I go through when I think about creativity. I think about it through food. I think about-- it’s like a crescendo. You want to build this up and then you want to drop it. And then you want it to be very contradicting and have complexity. But for the guest it should just be like one bite. But there’s a lot of things that needs to happen in there. And that’s my creative process. When I think about it like being from Ethiopia, growing up in Scandinavia, living in Harlem, there’s a lot of contradictions and complexities in all of that. So the creativity follows my experience. Jo Reed:  And Marcus, I’m just so curious because you are so good about walking that line of honoring traditions and moving forward, not being stuck. Marcus Samuelsson:  Yeah. Jo Reed:  What goes into achieving that balance? Marcus Samuelsson:  I think it’s many things. First of all, I lived in seven different countries. Right? And I mean that in the sense of so, I’ve been uprooted many times. And for that specific thing that you were asking about that could be helpful because I’ve seen things from many different point of views, whether you’re in Africa, whether you’re in Scandinavia, whether you’re in Switzerland it’s different than the lens from France. I’ve seen many different things and I’ve seen many different ethnicities caring about things, but they express it differently. It doesn’t mean that one does it better than the other. If you think about the word restaurant, it goes back to me to what the word "restaurant" means. It means to restore a community. And you have to think about that because restaurant jobs can't be outsourced. Very few jobs can be outsourced in a restaurant. So, you have this incredible opportunity to bring in people from the community; service, cooks, hosts, et cetera. Vegetables farms, local fish from the community. And you get presented to the locals, and kind of have to be checked by the locals first. And then both the restaurant and locals say "Hey, this is our place. We built this together." Once you've created that, which is very rare for a restaurant, once you've created that, it's magic.  Jo Reed: Marcus, thank you for giving me your time. I so appreciate it. Marcus Samuelsson:  Thank you. Jo Reed: That’s Marcus Samuelsson, an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and author. You can find The Red Rooster in Harlem at Lenox Ave off 125th Street. Marcus Samuelsson also recently published The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Arts Works blog or follow us at @NEAARTS on Twitter.  For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Creating new flavors with traditional food.