The prolific chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson is known for his handful of restaurants across the globe that celebrate his roots. Yet, a major part of his platform is to reclaim Black culinary traditions—something highlighted in his Harlem restaurant Red Rooster, where he has made it a priority to democratize food while uplifting the local community, and in his newest outpost, Hav & Mar, which opened this month in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood with a leadership team helmed by women of color.
His influence goes beyond food, however. He’s the cohost alongside chef Jonathan Waxman on a new podcast from Audible called Seat at the Table that explores the inside stories of some of the most iconic restaurants in the U.S.; a recurring figure on multiple food and chef TV shows; and an author of numerous cookbooks, including The Rise, a showcase of contemporary Black cooking through the lens of influential Black chefs. Here, Samuelsson shares his story, from his birth in Ethiopia and his childhood in Sweden to what keeps him passionate about the restaurant industry.
You were born in Ethiopia, then adopted and raised in Sweden. How did your upbringing influence you?
As an adult, I can look back and appreciate growing up in Sweden, where I was close to nature. We were outside a lot, whether it was swimming in the summer or foraging in the woods for blueberries and mushrooms in the fall. We looked different from everybody else: three Black kids with white parents. We stood out. Growing up is challenging. Then you add adoption and race on top of that. There were a lot of challenges, but the challenges were bigger once I started to get into the professional world. Kids, to me at least, were harmless. It was the adults in the room, as I got older, that made it more complicated.
Your grandmother Helga was special to you. What did you learn from her?
Grandma Helga came from a very humble background. She was a domestic homemaker and worked in people’s homes cooking and cleaning. I grew up with my grandparents in a fishing village, where my father’s side of the family is from. My grandma’s food was all about making everything at home. My father was a geologist, so we also traveled a lot with him. Eating out was centered around events or a special occasion, but most of the time was spent eating at home, and they were very good home-cooked meals.
Did you always know you wanted to be a chef?
When you grow up in a fishing village, you start working around 12 or 13 years old, and I always worked around food, whether that was pickling fish, cleaning fish, smoking fish, selling fish. I also loved the energy of cafés and restaurants: the back of house, front of house, the customers. I worked in one of the top restaurants in Gothenburg, Sweden. Early on, one of the chefs said, ‘If you’re going to do something in this industry, you have to get out of here. I can help you apply for different scholarships.’ We started to apply with my mom, and I got the chance to go to Japan. That was gamechanging to me. The smells, the food, the umami, the fish—everything was different. I was around 17, and that trip gave me so much confidence. Not only did I have a story, but I had also been to a place where none of my friends had ever been. At 19, I went to Switzerland, and every time I came back home, I felt like my city—my hometown—stood still. But I’d been somewhere, at least. It was a different way of getting experience and being in the world.
When did you realize you might have a talent for cooking?
I didn’t grow up in a time where people told you that you were good at anything. But I didn’t get fired, and I always had job offers. That ‘Good job, chef,’ that’s not what I was looking for. I had a lot of opportunities. Somewhere in all of this, I knew I was going in the right direction. There was always a way to climb up.
How did you end up working at Aquavit in New York?
My goal when I was 17 was to work at a three-star Michelin restaurant. Here I was at 22 years old, and I did that [at Georges Blanc restaurant in Lyon, France]. It was the first time I felt like I had leverage. I felt like I climbed Mount Everest. It wasn’t just doing it or being able to hang. I did it in a different language. I didn’t grow up speaking French. It was a big deal. When they asked me to stay, for the first time, I could say no to something and that was a position of strength. I was a hardworking kid, and I knew I could go to the next level. They thought I couldn’t do it because I was Black. I’m like, ‘Well, that is not going to change.’ That was hard to hear, but that’s not my truth.
When I arrived in the States [in 1994, Aquavit owner Hakan Swahn invited Samuelsson to New York to work as the second-in-command to the executive chef], I had a good résumé, and I started to have confidence. My parents said to me, ‘We don’t know when this opportunity is ever going to happen to you again. You should take it.’ I started off as a sous chef, and I knew I could do it even though I was only 23 years old. At that point, I had been working in fine dining much longer than most of my peers. I loved the opportunity of coming to New York and embracing the city for what that was and knowing all the ups and downs that can happen.
What did you learn from your early days in New York?
For me, it was about enjoying the moment. It’s never been about the money; it’s about the experience you’re going to have with the people you do it with. I learned so much, and I’m so grateful to my mentors like Charlie Trotter and Leah Chase, who helped me understand excellence and community. I still have mentors like Daniel Boulud and Jonathan Waxman. I feel so blessed to be part of that. It’s about the community I’m in and the community I come from, and to show both gratitude but also grit, that I’m going to be all right.
Two months into your time at Aquavit, executive chef Jan Sendel died unexpectedly. You took over and, at 24, became the youngest chef to receive a three-star review from The New York Times. What was it like to achieve that kind of success so early on?
I didn’t focus on the three stars, because it wasn’t something I could control. We focused on the food. We didn’t know food critic Ruth Reichl of The New York Times a was in the restaurant. We never caught her. That’s how good we were. I didn’t know that world. I knew that if I got the team to work hard and focus on the food, we could do a good job. I liked our chances. Aquavit was a very well-known restaurant in Sweden, so I worked with fear a little bit. I shouldn’t say fear, it was respect. I didn’t want to be the guy that closes Aquavit. That was very clear to me. The way to avoid that is to put out the best products you possibly can.
What was next for you after Aquavit?
I was at Aquavit for a long time, and I felt like as a young Black chef, I needed to understand my responsibilities. Why is it that I see a lot of people of color working, but I see very few Black chefs in leadership positions? At that point, I was in the position of leadership, and I wanted to embrace my community but also provide jobs and leadership for people of color. I needed a big goal to inspire me. After 9/11, it was hard for New York. As a New Yorker, I felt like I needed to do something that was bigger than serving the 1 percent of the 1 percent. That’s when I moved to Harlem, and I knew I would open my own restaurant with a focus on the modern Black experience. I was thinking about what this place would look and feel like. Who would work there? Who would eat there? That’s when the idea for Red Rooster started. That was the mid-2000s, but we didn’t open until 2010. I needed those years in between to study Harlem and how to execute on this.
Before you launched Red Rooster, you opened the short-lived Merkato 55 in the Meatpacking District with a menu that brought African cuisine to New York. What did you learn from that experience?
I needed to go through Merkato 55 to create Red Rooster. It was very hard for me that it didn’t work out, but it was the step I needed to get to this point. I always feel like there’s a journey and you can’t dissect what you want to keep in the journey and what you want to take out. It was a journey, and I lived through all of it—all the ups and downs. I have marks on my body for all of them.
What did Red Rooster do for the community and for you as a chef?
Red Rooster was embraced by Harlem, and that’s a privilege you have to work on and take care of. We think about that constantly. We’ve hosted presidents, chefs, and musicians throughout the years. That’s what it means to be a restaurant in Harlem of our caliber. But at the end of the day, we host regular people who live in Harlem. We provide jobs for regular people in Harlem, and hopefully, we create a sense of pride that we are a great community. During the pandemic, together with World Central Kitchen, we served food for months. That was a moment when I started thinking about what it meant to have a restaurant during a pandemic.
You’ve also expanded outside of Harlem with Marcus restaurants in the Bahamas and Montreal. Plus, you still have eateries in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. When did you decide it was time to grow your culinary brand?
Three years after opening Red Rooster, I thought it was time to do something else. We were lucky enough to do something in my hometown in Gothenburg, which I always wanted to do because my family was there. We took over an old post office, and we built Norda. My goal was never to expand just to expand. Being in Harlem and in Sweden made sense to me because those are part of my background. A couple of years after that, we did the Marcus restaurant in Montreal at the Four Seasons Hotel. It was a bit higher end and spoke more to a seafood menu. At the same time, we did fast-casual concept Streetbird, where you can order food online. For me, everything must be centered around great experiences.
We opened Hav & Mar in November. ‘Hav’ means ocean in Swedish, and ‘Mar’ means honey in Amharic in Ethiopia. I’m combining my experiences and sharing them with New York. I haven’t opened a restaurant here for nine years, but it’s all about expanding what’s possible. The pandemic made me think a lot about, ‘Do restaurants matter?’ And, of course, the customer showed us that they do. With Hav & Mar, I looked at what was missing from the industry. Our leadership team is all women of color, from the GM to the chef, sous chef, and head baker. I wanted to champion that. As people have had Red Rooster as a jumping off point and created their own careers, five years from now, people will say, ‘I started at Hav & Mar.’ That will be gamechanging for our industry. I think about that when I work with CCAP [Careers Through Culinary Arts Program], as well. How do you take part, in multiple ways, to improve the industry and make it more diverse?
Tell us about the design of Hav & Mar.
I worked with an amazing architect and designer, Zébulon Perron out of Montreal who did Marcus in Montreal. We’re in Chelsea, so I wanted the restaurant to reflect the artist community. A dear friend of mine is artist Derrick Adams, and he came in here as creative director [and to create artworks for the space]. We did this mood board together with images from Ethiopia, Sweden, and New York. We also wanted to think about curves and warmth. Thematically, we looked to the ocean and water. We thought a lot about Black mermaids, for example, which show up in the logo. To be in the Starrett Lehigh Building, art galleries and the audience are right there. That’s inspiring to me. It’s a building where creativity is celebrated.
Who inspires you from a design perspective?
There are people who have transformed the industry in terms of design. When you think about [designer] David Rockwell, for example, he made it much more theatrical to dine in the room. When you’re in New York, you get inspired by great art and great design. I’m also inspired by people like Alberta Wright, a Black woman who owned Jezebel restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. She was not an architect, but she designed it herself. She had her gut feeling. When I created Red Rooster, it was matching the energy of Lenox Avenue with an African American cultural voice. When you step in, you should never doubt where you are.
How has art influenced you?
I’ve been extremely influenced by artists like Kara Walker, Julie Mehretu, Lorna Simpson, Derrick Adams, and Mickalene Thomas. They have helped me think about how I want my restaurants to feel. I might think about it traditionally from an architectural point of view, but then I layer in style. That was the luxury of coming up in New York. I came up at the same time as Sanford Biggers, Julie Mehretu—some of the best African American artists in the world. Someone like Thelma Golden [director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem] has been extremely informative for me and helpful as a friend, but also as a mentor in terms of the art world. Being introduced to these incredible people—and not just going to a gallery but being in their homes, cooking with them—has informed how I view things. As Black creators, our lens is different. It just is. That’s something I want to build on, and that’s what Hav & Mar is. It’s showing that Black excellence can come out of anywhere.
How would you describe yourself as a leader?
I draw a lot from the fact that I’ve traveled and lived in so many places, so I can relate to a lot of different people. I can relate to how it feels to be on the outside looking in. That’s an experience I bring to the table. I want to collaborate, especially when I don’t have the answer to something, whether that is a financial question or front-of-the-house solutions. I want to inspire. People come to restaurants because they want to see people in the room, they want to feel something. They don’t come to a restaurant because they’re hungry. They come because they want to be part of something. It’s very important that we match that magic.
After everything we went through the last couple years, especially in the restaurant industry, what do you think hospitality means today?
Hospitality is needed more than ever, and restaurants are the heartbeat of communities. It’s part of a larger conversation of what we want our neighborhoods to look like. Restaurants have a value proposition that you can’t rip out. I’m proud of my community because we have gone through a very difficult time, and we’re still here. We’ve shown a lot of strength, and we’re not going to give up.
Tell us something about yourself that most people may not know.
I played a lot of soccer, and I thought I would become professional soccer player, and it didn’t happen. I take that energy of not succeeding and use it as motivation.
Favorite part of the job?
The people and the food.
Best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Stay curious.
What has been your most memorable hospitality experience?
I remember eating at El Bulli at Ferran Adrià ’s restaurant outside of Barcelona, and I was completely in awe of the whole experience. I’ll never forget it. But also eating at hawker stands in Singapore, where you can eat for $5, and you have an incredible meal.
What is your secret to success?
It’s love. I don’t think it’s a secret. My family has had a huge impact on me, and that inspires me and pushes me.
Most challenging project?
Opening a restaurant now after the pandemic is very challenging because we’re not fully on the other side. But it’s also very inspirational. Putting Red Rooster together was also very difficult. It wasn’t just one thing we had to think about, it was many things. But that’s when you do some of your best work.
Looking back over your life and career, did you ever imagine you would be where you are today?
I worked every day since I was 17 years old, but it never felt like work. I enjoy everything about what I do. My parents always said to aim high. They prepared me, and they had amazing work ethics. If you’re fortunate and come from a background with supportive people, you can do amazing things. I feel like I’m in the beginning of it. I never doubted that I’d own a restaurant. You have to be ambitious. What’s the point of being in New York City if you don’t test your wings?
This article originally appeared in HD’s November 2022 issue.