Born in Ethiopia, adopted in Sweden, star chef in America. He’s cooked for the Obamas, now he’s coming to London. Meet Marcus Samuelsson

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20 OFM | 15.05.16 | The Observer

Marcus Samuelsson

walk through Harlem at dusk with village and though we didn’t have a lot, we ate Marcus Samuelsson is less gentle well. I was pickling mackerel and herring. My stroll than royal procession. The grandmother Helga was a big cook and four chef may be wearing a flat cap, nights a week we ate with her. There was lots pulledA down over his eyes, and a dark jacket, of foraging. I remember shelling peas in front but they all know who he is out here north of the TV. September meant mushrooms.” He of Manhattan’s 110th Street. And they want played football (developing an obsession with him to know they know. As we barrel from Arsenal, which had Swedish-born players) but neon-gilded diner to cocktail place, from his quickly gravitated to weekend jobs in kitchens, own rotisserie chicken joint to the jazz bars he finding a similar team vibe in both places. wants me to see, he is constantly greeted with At 16, he went to catering college before shouts of “Hey chef!” from passersby which finding his first professional jobs. In 1989 he returns with a gentle, “Oh, pur-leeze”, and a he got a position in a grand Swiss hotel that shrug as if to say: “I’m just another guy.” made him so nervous he threw up before For many people in Harlem, Samuelsson every service. He was taught pastry in Austria is not just another guy. For a start, the before landing a place at the three Michelin- Ethiopian-born chef with the aquiline starred restaurant of Georges Blanc in France, features, the Swedish surname and the where he started right back at the bottom. “If only-in-America story, is a major employer. you work for Georges Blanc even the lowest Through his various ventures, including his guy is fantastic.” flagship restaurant the Red Rooster on Lenox He visited New York for a stage – an unpaid Avenue, he has given jobs to 200 locals. Paul period of employment – at Aquavit, a Swedish- McCartney and the jazz trumpeter Wynton influenced restaurant that was beginning to samuelsson’s tour of Marsalis have eaten there, along with former harlem: sylvia’s soul food make a name for itself. He immediately knew state governors and superstar basketball he’d found a town in which he could belong. players. It is liberal New York’s fantasy come “Here you could be from somewhere else, yet to life; a single room in this splintered city be American,” he says. “I’d tried to fit in but where its various social tribes really do seem eventually you realise it’s just not going to to break bread together. happen that way. I wanted somewhere where The food festival Samuelsson launched, the conversation was based on talent.” Harlem EatUp, held each year in May, brings He returned to New York in the early 1990s, big-name chefs from all over America to and a job at Aquavit, this time on the staff. their doorstep. What’s more, having cooked After the untimely death of the head chef for Barack Obama at the White House, he he was put in charge. “I was only meant to even brought the president back to his place hold the fort until they found a replacement.” in Harlem for a $30,000-a-plate election None was ever appointed. Shortly after that, lee lee’s baked goods fundraiser. Making his home neighbourhood on west 118th street Samuelsson received three out of four stars the star is, he claims, what really matters. from the New York Times; at 23 he was the “It’s Harlem first, the Red Rooster second,” youngest chef ever to do so. And so he dug he says. “A menu you can learn. But the place? into life as a feted New York chef. He could, Learning a place is different.” he says, have carried on like that were it not Right now, he is trying to learn an entirely for his sister Linda, who 15 years ago tracked new place. In the autumn, he opens a second down their birth family. Samuelsson admits Red Rooster, inside the new Curtain Hotel in this was not something to which he’d given London’s Shoreditch. His take on American much thought; he’d simply considered himself soul food subtly refracted through the lens of fortunate. He credits his sister with “living a his African heritage is coming to London. “We fuller life” than he does. must get 20 requests a year to open a new Red Together they went back to the village Rooster,” he says. “I only wanted to do it in a of their birth and met their father, a priest at his own restaurant city with a dynamic we could learn from.” red rooster and farmer. Samuelsson discovered he had This, he tells me, “is a humble journey. eight half siblings, whose education he now It’s not some big New York chef rolling into supports. Not long after that he was teaching London.” I suggest to him gently that the a class at the Culinary Institute of America Curtain’s owners may have different ideas. there, and the children were quickly adopted when he was heckled by a student. He could “Look,” he says. “I really believe in what we by Lennart and Ann Marie Samuelsson, a talk fluently about the food of Sweden and have to say.” It’s why he wants to take me on geologist and his wife from Gothenburg in France, the young trainee said, but what could a tour of Harlem, so I can understand how he Sweden. “Apparently my birth mother’s side he tell them about Africa? “He had a point,” went about launching the Red Rooster and wanted to keep us but they couldn’t track us Samuelsson says. “It was time to do some making it a part of the community. He insists down. My father’s side was happy to let us go.” research.” He travelled throughout Africa. it’s not all about him. Samuelsson recognises that it looks like The book that resulted from the journey, That may well be true, but his personal a curious upbringing, the black African 2006’s The Soul of a New Cuisine: a Discovery story is compelling. Samuelsson, now 45, boy raised amid the blond, blue-eyed of the Food and Flavours of Africa, came with was born Kassahun Tsegie in rural Ethiopia Scandinavians, but as a child, he says, you a foreword from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in 1971. When he was one, he and his three- accept the reality you are given. “I had two and was named best international cookbook year-old sister were taken by their mother parents who didn’t look like me,” he says, with by the James Beard Foundation. “I was both to hospital in Addis Ababa so all three could a shrug. More important to him, was his dad’s trying to find out about the food and myself.” colin clark colin be treated for tuberculosis. His mother died obsession with fishing. “We lived in a fishing The African restaurant he opened on the »

The Observer | 15.05.16 | OFM 23 Marcus Samuelsson

back of it was less successful, which made the in London for five years as I did with Harlem Red Rooster project – a rebirth for the Red before opening. I have to hit a completely Rooster name, a long-gone Harlem institution different drumbeat.” – that much more important. I ask whether he We leave Sylvia’s and walk back past the set up the classy soul food restaurant, up here Red Rooster to look at the site of what was in then down-at-heel Harlem, out of guilt: guilt once the Lenox Lounge, one of Harlem’s that he had led such a comfortable life when great jazz spots. Now it’s closed and boarded so many in Ethiopia had not, guilt that he up. “It’s a sad sight,” he says. But he’s tried to had enjoyed so much success. He thinks for a rebalance things, by having jazz in the front moment. “It’s a good question. The thing is as of the Rooster by the bar, and downstairs in a chef you can’t just cut from the centre cut.” the basement at Ginny’s Supper Club, where You mean you can’t just always work with Alicia Keys has played. “I’m led through the best ingredients? “Exactly. Having been culture,” he says. “Without culture we are to Africa I couldn’t be blind to all that. But I nothing.” Music, he says, is a part of that. “I also knew Africa wasn’t just about poverty. take pride in having musicians sitting next to Getting away from Africa brought with it a the ladies just in from church and bankers.” responsibility. When I was growing up in As night falls we take a short cab ride over Sweden we had a saying in my family that you to 8th Avenue. Unlike Lenox, which still has should never get stuck on bitter.” its rough edges, its discount stores and fast I first came across Samuelsson in 2009 food joints, 8th Avenue is starting to feel like when I was judging Top Chef Masters, a US a creeping extension of the well-to-do Upper TV show in which big name chefs competed West Side a few streets south. for a $100,000 cheque for charity and Streetbird, Samuelsson’s rotisserie chicken bragging rights. Samuelsson’s story, always inside red rooster restaurant, is a few blocks away. We step expressed through his food – a Swedish- inside. The air is thick with the smell of inspired fish dish here, an African stew there roasting hen and the sound of music. It’s – was thrilling and that, combined with killer themed around hip hop, and received flak technique, took him to the title. He seemed when it opened because the decor included ineffably chilled. But, if anything, the man I pairs of hanging trainers, which in New York meet now is much more at ease with himself. can be used to reference inter-gang killings. In 2012 he published a memoir, Yes, Chef; The first stop on our tour of Harlem is Sylvia’s, the review of it in the New York Observer a local institution just the next block down accused him of a condescending approach from the Rooster on Lenox, which has to Harlem, of using it for his own purposes. been trading there for over half a century. He shrugs at this and looks around the full Samuelsson moved up to Harlem with his tables, as if wearied by such political point Ethiopian-born model wife, Maya Haile, five scoring. He says simply that the site occupied years before he opened the restaurant. They by Streetbird was once one of the biggest are now expecting their first child. Sylvia’s is crack houses in Harlem. “The name Harlem all Formica-topped counter, and clatter and is not just some name tag,” he says. “It was hiss. Behind that counter is a long “steam here before us. My ambition is to make having table”, a holding place for oxtail and fried worked in Harlem as a cook mean something.” chicken and collard greens cooked in volume. We make our way back to the Rooster, via “I used to come up here to eat after service a couple of still empty jazz venues. His own downtown because it’s relaxed,” he says. “It’s restaurant is now heaving. We are meant to rooted in African-American dining. Here they have dinner together, eating some of the dishes want to know how you’re doing, how’s your his team is planning for London. As well as uncle, how’s your mom.” A place like Sylvia’s, the obvious – a whole chicken, tenderised in he says, is one long conversation. buttermilk, then deep fried and served with Didn’t he worry that he was going to be rotiserrie chicken restaurant streetbird mace gravy – there are more refined touches: stepping on their toes by opening the Rooster? a savoury macaroon of chicken livers, cured After all, they’re famed for their fried chicken salmon on sushi rice, slices of barbecue pork and he was going to be doing that too. “Their with slippery ribbon noodles in a chicken chicken is boneless breast meat. I decided there now. In London, the world is there.” He stock that punches hard with ginger. But this, I would do only bone-in brown meat. Right has been coming and going from London for Samuelsson says, is a work in progress. there you have a difference. There had to be months now, he says, grazing his way along Or at least he says this when I can catch a divide.” He says he’ll be trying to apply the Broadway Market in Hackney, or having him, because he keeps disappearing to hop same ideas at the London venture. breakfast at Roast above Borough Market. tables and work the room. Clearly he feels a Yes, he’ll be bringing his “yardbird” fried Which leads to the inevitable question: responsibility to be present. Here in this chicken to Shoreditch and Helga’s meatballs, just how much time will he be spending in corner of Harlem, he has created much more named after his grandma’s recipe. There will London? “I’m not just gonna be phoning it in. than just a restaurant. Now all Marcus be gravadlax and fried fish, and the sudden Come the fall I’ll be relocating, certainly for a Samuelsson has to do is work the same outbreaks of African spicing that speak of his while.” It transpires that his wife’s sisters live magic in London. OFM beginnings. “But some of the dishes are going in west London, and with the baby arriving, Red Rooster Shoreditch opens at the Curtain to be interpretations of east London, of the living there, albeit temporarily, makes an Hotel, London in September; thecurtain.com dishes of the Jewish community that used to be awful lot of sense. Plus, he says, it’s the only colin clark colin there and of the Bangladeshi community that’s way to get it right. “I can’t claim to have lived turn over for a marcus samuelsson recipe »

24 OFM | 15.05.16 | The Observer Marcus Samuelsson: the recipe

Helga’s Meatballs with lingonberry preserves, pickled cucumbers and braised cabbage

Serves 4-6 For the lingonberry preserves (makes about 650g) lingonberries 100g (available from scandikitchen.co.uk) sugar 450g water 950ml

For the pickled cucumbers cucumber 1 sea salt 1 tbsp water 360ml white wine vinegar 120ml sugar 225g bay leaf 1 allspice 2 berries

For the meatballs dry breadcrumbs 60g double cream 60ml red onion 1 medium, finely chopped olive oil 2 tbsp ground chuck or sirloin beef 225g ground veal 225g ground pork 225g honey 2 tbsp egg 1 salt 1½ tbsp black pepper ½ tbsp unsalted butter 3 tbsp

For the sauce chicken stock 480ml double cream 120ml lingonberry preserves 165g (see above) pickle juice 2 tbsp, from the pickled Spoon vinegar, sugar, bay leaf and allspice in a frequently, for about 7 minutes. Be cucumbers (see above) some sauce medium saucepan and bring to a boil. sure that all sides are browned and salt ½ tbsp Remove from the heat and let cool. the meatballs are cooked through. black pepper 2 tsp over each Rinse the salt off the cucumber and Transfer them to a plate. Reserve 1 meatball. squeeze out as much moisture as tablespoon of fat from the frying pan For the braised cabbage Serve with possible. Put the cucumber and pickling for the sauce. bacon 225g, diced preserves liquid in a medium bowl. Cover and To make the sauce, in the meatball onion 100g, sliced thin on the side refrigerate for 3-6 hours before serving. frying pan whisk together the reserved carrots 75g, sliced thin To make the meatballs, in a small fat, stock, cream, preserves and pickle red cabbage 300g, thinly sliced bowl soak the breadcrumbs in the juice and bring to a simmer. Let the green cabbage 300g, thinly sliced cream, then set aside. In a frying pan sauce simmer and reduce until apple cider vinegar 60ml over a medium heat saute the onion in thickened. Season to taste. Add the salt 1 tbsp oil for about 5 minutes, until softened. meatballs to the sauce, reduce the heat black pepper 2 tsp Remove from the heat. to low, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Combine the ground beef, veal and To make the braised cabbage, cook directions pork with the onion, honey and egg, and the bacon over a medium heat until the mix well with your hands in a large bowl. fat has no colour. Add the onion and To make the lingonberry preserves, Season with salt and pepper. Add the carrot, and cook for 10 minutes. combine all the ingredients in a pot soaked breadcrumbs and combine well. Add the cabbage and cook until and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to With wet hands (to stop the mixture tender, about 10 minutes. Finish with a low flame and simmer until a syrupy sticking) shape into meatballs the size vinegar, salt and pepper. consistency is achieved, then cool. of a golf ball, placing them on a plate To serve, place the cabbage on a To make the pickled cucumbers, use lightly moistened with water. You plate and top with the meatballs. a mandoline to thinly slice the should have about 24 meatballs. Spoon some sauce over each individual cucumber. Put in a colander, toss with Melt the butter in a large frying pan meatball. Serve with the lingonberry the salt and stand for about 30 minutes. over a medium-high heat. Add the preserves and pickled cucumbers on romas foord romas Meanwhile, combine the water, meatballs in batches and cook, turning the side. OFM

26 OFM | 15.05.16 | The Observer