by contributor Donna Shor
Photo credit: Baltz & Co
As soon as the slightly built man took the stage at the Howard Theater, his finely-carved Ethiopian features broke into a grin as affection rolled up toward him from the audience like a warm wave.
They knew Marcus Samuelsson from television, or they had read his cookbooks or heard of his fame as a globally-lauded cook, and many knew of the obstacles he had overcome. The evening celebrated his newest book “Yes, Chef.”
The crowd of two hundred and fifty sat at little tables with napkin-wrapped cutlery and listened as waiters dashed through the room to serve the three course meal of dishes created by him, but prepared by the Howard Theater chef and his crew.
It was a fairly young audience of 250 or so, with just a few old-timers there who might have remembered the legendary days of the Howard, when succeeding generations of stars marked the varying trends in American music. The Howard began in 1910, and was already long established by the 40’s when President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor were in the audience.
Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, Buddy Holley, Ella Fitzgerald, Danny Kaye, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Marvin Gaye were a few of the hundreds who appeared here to the strains of jazz, rock ‘n roll, rhythm and blues or soul. Newly restored, it re-opened this year in April, again booking musicians and holding a Gospel Brunch on Sundays, with all the trimmings.
Marcus discussed the dishes: the carefully spiced fried chicken, collard greens laced with strands of boy choy “to lighten it,” a delectable dish of finely diced mixed root vegetables topped with a fried egg, and a dessert of tiny chocolate pancakes, ice cream and chocolate sauce. A sophisticated and world-traveled chef, he spoke of the various spices he uses, and how he searches always to develop flavor.
It hasn’t also been so; in earlier times he knew hunger. Ethiopian-born, when he was three and his sister five, they and their mother were all deathly ill from tuberculosis. The closest medical help was in Addis Ababa seventy-five miles away, and they set out to walk there in the heat. Somehow they managed it, with Marcus strapped to his valiant mother, who saved their lives but died in the hospital.
The authorities arranged their adoption by Anne-Marie and Lennart Samuelsson, a Swedish geologist and his wife, who had earlier taken in Anna, a girl with a Swedish mother and Jamaican father. With Anne-Marie’s mother, Helga the blended group became a loving family, close today.
In Sweden, the children flourished with sea air and good food. His grandmother Helga was an excellent instinctive cook, and Marcus loved learning from her, studying the exact use of kitchen tools, the exact angle to hold a knife, later a big advantage over his peers. The pastime would change his life.
He was a fast runner, and very athletic, but after early success on a youth team, his hope of being a pro soccer player ended when the coach told him he was too small. Later he learned that through birthdate confusion he was younger than the other ‘players; but he had already enrolled in the local culinary school. He would be a serious classic chef, not a cook, but The Chef in a kitchen…
Marcus did everything to make it happen. Despite back-breaking fifteen hour days, he worked harder than the other students, studied more, learned languages to work abroad, and took an all-business attitude in the kitchen. He found that in serious kitchens, the chef is not just a king, but an emperor, and often a screaming despot, ready to humiliate and fire in an instant any underling who made even the tiniest lapse. Because kitchen work in a fine dining spot depends completely on team interaction, laziness or inattention can create chaos when orders back up or are bungled. He learned never to talk back, but to say, robot-like “Yes, Chef” almost in his sleep.
His diligence got him promotions far ahead of his years. He aimed for the top kitchens to apprentice in, a timeout favor the chef can grant a worker who has earned it. He cooked in France, in Switzerland, on cruise ships, and he made it to the top, becoming a chef himself when he was only nineteen.
By twenty-three, he was the chef in Aquavit, Manhattan’s classic Swedish dining establishment. The owner, Hakan, encouraged his innovations, his unusual use of spices and combinations, when he saw it brought the restaurant prestige. By twenty-four, he had become the youngest chef ever to earn three stars from the New York Times. He had appeared on Iron Chef, and had taken first place on Top Chef Masters had earned the James Beard Award as the New York’s Best Chef.
Traveling back to Ethiopia had made a profound impression on him before; he went back again to find the father he didn’t know, the father they thought had died in the war with Eritrea. He was a farmer, and a priest with eight children from a second wife. All ten lived in a clay house that was forty feet square, and with a $200 a year income. That would have been the life Marcus would have had, instead he has been able to change their circumstances, and insure education for his half-siblings.
When Marcus married a beautiful Ethiopian girl, Maya, he held a major celebration in Ethiopia for over 200, with friends flying in from six countries. His Ethiopian father was there, and Anne-Marie, his stable mother, who had been the lodestar of his life. His father Lennart and grandmother Helga had both died.
A major blow had fallen when he wanted to leave Aquavit. Hakan told him if he left, or did any work outside the partnership associated with Marcus’s own name, Hakan would be entitled to a percentage of the money. Incredulous, Marcus found that legally, Hakan had a case. He had mentored Marcus in terms of public relations; he had trained him in the larger restaurant world. Marcus had to buy his way out of the partnership. It took all his savings to buy back his own name, leaving him broke, and without a restaurant.
Time passed, he opened the successful Red Rooster restaurant in Harlem, where he feels most at home; he and Maya live nearby. Another honor came when he and his team were chosen to design and cook the first state dinner of the Obama administration―it was,unfortunately, the “crashers” dinner. Nevertheless, it won Marcus kudos for overcoming the problem of creating a really delicious dinner without meat, in deference to the honorees, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, and his wife.
It was after eleven when the Obama’s came to the kitchen to greet the staff. They and the staff were all exhausted, and Michael, who had helped Marcus cook the dinner, was so excited and tired that when the president asked him a question, Michael answered “Yes, Chef.” “Obama did a double take,” says Marcus, “and we all laughed.”
