Marcus Samuelsson > Quotes

“Hard work IS its own reward. Integrity IS priceless. Art DOES feed the soul.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“But one of the things I have learned during the time I have spent in the United States is an old African American saying: Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I'm a big believer in the negligee, that nearly invisible screen standing between you and the object of your desire.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“For months beforehand, I fielded calls from British media. A couple of the reporters asked me to name some British chefs who had inspired me. I mentioned the Roux brothers, Albert and Michel, and I named Marco Pierre White, not as much for his food as for how—by virtue of becoming an apron-wearing rock-star bad boy—he had broken the mold of whom a chef could be, which was something I could relate to. I got to London to find the Lanesborough dining room packed each night, a general excitement shared by everyone involved, and incredibly posh digs from which I could step out each morning into Hyde Park and take a good long run around Buckingham Palace. On my second day, I was cooking when a phone call came into the kitchen. The executive chef answered and, with a puzzled look, handed me the receiver. Trouble at Aquavit, I figured.
I put the phone up to my ear, expecting to hear Håkan’s familiar “Hej, Marcus.” Instead, there was screaming. “How the fuck can you come to my fucking city and think you are going to be able to cook without even fucking referring to me?” This went on for what seemed like five minutes; I was too stunned to hang up. “I’m going to make sure you have a fucking miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you fucking black bastard.” And then he hung up.
I had cooked with Gordon Ramsay once, a couple of years earlier, when we did a promotion with Charlie Trotter in Chicago. There were a handful of chefs there, including Daniel Boulud and Ferran Adrià, and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them. As a group we were interviewed by the Chicago newspaper; Gordon interrupted everyone who tried to answer a question, craving the limelight. I was almost embarrassed for him. So when I was giving interviews in the lead-up to the Lanesborough event, and was asked who inspired me, I thought the best way to handle it was to say nothing about him at all. Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out. To be honest, though, only one phrase in his juvenile tirade unsettled me: when he called me a black bastard. Actually, I didn’t give a fuck about the bastard part. But the black part pissed me off.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Food’s my only bag. It’s my gig, my art, my life. Always has been, always will be. I’m always battling myself – the part of me that says I can and the part of me that says I can’t. My greatest gift has been that the part of me that says “I can’t” is always, always just a little bit louder.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“If only my love was a net that could keep the flies out. If only my love was a net full of food for all the hungry bellies. I understand why so many people have given up on Africa - no one wants to say we are leaving a continent of people behind to tough it out in a hundreds-of-years-old war of survival, but we are, and the reason is because the level of change it would take to make a difference, to heal past wounds and chart a new path is mammoth, gargantuan, almost unimaginable.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Bookstores are a giant present waiting to be unwrapped, full of stories and discoveries and lives.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I'm OK with firing people when they fuck up, but canning them when they've done nothing wrong - that's painful. [on the layoffs needed after 9/11 hit the business]”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Just us two men," my father said, my father who had so longed for a son that he had flown paper planes--adoption forms in triplicate--all the way to Africa to make his dream come true.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“It wasn’t just the flavors that knocked me on my ass. It was seeing different people holding it, preparing it, serving it. Sometimes the chefs were not in the white jackets, and it wasn’t only men, it was women, it was children, it was everyone. There were Indians, blacks, Koreans, mixed people. When I had my own restaurant someday, I thought, I would never rule out someone based on race or sex or nationality. I wouldn’t do it because it was egalitarian, I’d do it because cutting people out meant cutting off talent and opportunity, people who could bring more to the table than I could ever imagine. I felt like I was climbing aboard a new food train, one that I’m still on to this day.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“That gave us enough time to get a shot of Ethiopian coffee, espresso style. Nothing tastes better than Ethiopian coffee; almost everywhere you go, it is roasted right before it’s brewed. In the United States, we think it’s a big deal if you wait to grind the beans before you make coffee. Here, the benchmark for freshness is miles higher.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I’m always battling myself – the part of me that says I can and the part of me that says I can’t. My greatest gift has been that the part of me that says “I can’t” is always, always just a little bit louder.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“A guy like Franz could talk smack all day about my Afro, my lack of brains, my mother, her alleged lack of virtue.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“What Harlem is, is constantly changing. It is a place that comes at you like a duet or a trio. Some avenues reveal a quartet of interest, while on side streets, a soloist steps out and breaks into song.

Harlem is Langston. Harlem is allure. Harlem is jazz. Harlem is my wife, standing on an avenue with chickpea flour perched on her head. 'Come on, Marcus, let's hurry.' We walk as if we are hungry and destined. Harlem is love. And strife. And sorrow. Harlem is art. Harlem is the Apollo and the young woman who stands inside thinking, I'm going to get this. Harlem is poverty. Harlem is wealth. Harlem is America.

Harlem is my home.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem

“Just fry the d**n bird,' gave me license to play. Michael Garrett, my sous chef at the time, and I turned chicken skin into cracklings and folded it into our deviled eggs. Our chicken and waffles came with a side of Chicken Liver Butter. We made Wild Wild Wings and our signature Bird Funk. At brunch we serve chicken liver omelets. Occasionally, we offer a dish called Just Fry the D**n Bird. Brioche and chicken liver, chicken gravy, every piece of the bird cooked in schmaltz. What I could do with chicken became the anchor of Red Rooster. The bird is our heartbeat, and it grounds our menu. We make use of every part of it. A ladle of chicken stock goes into just about everything.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem

“I spent so much of my life on the outside that I began to doubt that I would ever truly be in with any one people, any one place, and one tribe. But Harlem is big enough, diverse enough, scrappy enough, old enough, and new enough to encompass all that I am and all that I hope to be. After all that traveling, I am, at last, home.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Mormor did. My father had brought our frying pan from home”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I carried Torsten’s plate over to the table, placing”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“One of the reasons that people enjoy coming to a great restaurant is that when an extraordinary meal is placed in front of them, they feel honored, respected, and even a little bit loved.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Whatever goes down, whatever turns up—make food and music and dance and story out of it.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem

“Right now in Harlem, for every bank and chicken wing franchise joint, there is a small business owner who has spent a decade trying to figure out how to cater to a neighborhood he has fallen in love with. For every man or woman who has succumbed to that spell, I want to tell them: Go for it, do it. I want to pass the word like gospel. Let me tell you something: Right now in Harlem authorship is on the move. This is ours, we tell each other. We have made it, chopped it, cooked it, played it. This is our story. Gordon Parks, photographer, musicians, writer, film director paved a way for us. Bear witness, he told us. That was his gift to the neighborhood. Whatever goes down, whatever turns up - make food and music and dance and story out of it. Right now and since forever, the world keeps telling us there's only room for one: Serena and that's it. Toni and that's it. I wonder if they can hear Harlem across the divide. Come one, come all. That's how we wrestle with urban renewal, black removal. The church ladies know this, and so do the hustlers. Right now in Harlem, we don't shy away from the ugly; we don't bow our heads to what's beautiful. We just keep asking, how does all this new s**t fit with the old? Right now in Harlem there's room; there's hope; there's inspiration; there's good food. I may not be able to explain the magic, but it is there. To be in Harlem and make it takes luck, but nobody told me different.

One thing is certain, wherever you are, you should come to Harlem - right now.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem

“I love Thanksgiving because it’s a holiday that is centered around food and family, two things that are of utmost importance to me.”
― Marcus Samuelsson

“made it my business to be tough in the ways that they were tough—on the inside, where it counted. The”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Today, in the dead of night when I should be sleeping, I sometimes imagine the breath of the woman who not only gave me life, but delivered me from death. I sometimes reach into that tin by my stove and take a handful of berbere, sift it through my fingers, and toss it into the pan. I watch my wife cook and I imagine that I can see my mother's hands. I have taught myself the receipts of my mother's people because those foods are for me, as a chef, the easiest connection to the mysteries of who my mother was. Her identity remains stubbornly shrouded in the past, so I feed myself and the people I love the food that she made. But I cannot see her face.”
― Marcus Samuelsson

“The more ground I covered in New York and the more people I met, the more I came to see the difference between international and diverse. Interlaken was international, and I got off on the energy of being around so many different cultures and languages there. But in the end, they were all going back to where they came from. ... New York was different. There were divides along lines of race and class, but whereas the ethnic Swiss owned Switzerland and the ethnic Swedes owned Sweden, everybody in New York had a stake in where they were. Maybe you had to have a place this big to allow there to be a hundred different New Yorks living side by side, but almost everyone I saw seemed to move with a sense of belonging. This was their city whether you liked it or not.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“It's one of the many reasons that I go to sleep and wake up with thoughts of authorship. Who writes our stories? Who chronicles our tales of cooking it, playing it, writing it? Baldwin, Gordon, the Apollo, Jacob Lawrence, Paul Mooney, James Brown, Malcolm - that's my neighborhood. Why wouldn't I want to cook for the people who lived there?”
― Marcus Samuelsson, The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem

“One thing I believe with all my soul: Don't try to guess somebody's ceiling.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Just us two men," my father said, my father who had so longed for a son that he had flown paper plans--adoption forms in triplicate--all the way to Africa to make his dream come true.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“If you are having conversations with people about fried chicken, watch out. Their stories are steeped in lore and myth. Regular people fry their bird with a rabbit foot in their pockets, with their uncle's secret cooking hat perched on their heads. Not only do they have special pans - cast-iron skillets top the list - but they have the special pot. You know, the one their great, great, great grandmother forged from volcanic rock.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem

“Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef