Restaurants
Red Rooster, Ginny’s Supper Club, Streetbird Rotisserie, and American Table Café and Bar, New York; Uptown Brasserie, JFK Airport; Marc Burger, Chicago; Marcus’, Bermuda; Kitchen & Table, Sweden and Norway; Norda and American Table Brasserie and Bar, Sweden
On early food memories
Cooking meatballs with my grandmother [in Sweden] was always a big thing for me. I didn’t think about being a chef, it’s just what you did. I wasn’t watching TV. We were berry picking, mushroom hunting. Our family was in action.
On big breaks
That happened over different times. Getting accepted to work in a three-star Michelin restaurant [Georges Blanc]; receiving three stars at Aquavit [from the New York Times, the youngest person at 23 to ever receive such an accolade]; obviously cooking for President Barack Obama; and opening Red Rooster [in Harlem].
On choosing Harlem for Red Rooster, Ginny’s, and Streetbird
My mom was always on me in terms of, ‘Why aren’t you opening something in the community that you live? Why do we always have to travel to your experiences? Why do you only open things that are expensive?’ I had just moved to Harlem, and opening Red Rooster—a local restaurant in a local community—answered that. The beauty about Rooster is that you can sit with us and have cornbread and beer, or you can sit and have uptown chowder with lobster, so it doesn’t ever exclude what type of experience the consumer wants to have.
On opening American Table at New York’s Lincoln Center
Everything we do is around culture, and Lincoln Center is one of the biggest world-class destinations for culture. With American Table [our goal is] to serve very simple food. It’s a café, but before we were there, it had a lack of this simplicity of just yummy, delicious food.
On design in his restaurants
[Being Ethiopian] Africa and African pattern are very strong in my restaurants, and Swedish influence is very strong too since I grew up in Sweden around wood, where design actually matters, and being an architect and designer is a very prominent job. Design is everything I think about in terms of how to match the hospitality and the food. It starts with design.
.Marcus’ at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club, designed by Parts and Labor
For Marcus’ at the Hamilton Princess in Bermuda, I felt the island had good food, but it didn’t have a restaurant that felt like New York in terms of design. We have African pattern with local style and of course a lot of Scandinavian touches in terms of wood and coloring.
At Red Rooster, you experience Harlem—that’s the narrative. My partner Andrew Chapman and I wanted to do jazz downstairs, and that’s why we built an old-school supper club, while upstairs is focused on the bar and the kitchen. We built this big, voluptuous bar where the light comes from the kitchen, so it’s really this cornerstone.
On cooking for the president
It was an amazing opportunity to be the selected chef to do his first state dinner. It’s something you have to do in a very short time, 44 minutes for four courses to be precise, but it was also a lot of fun for the staff and team too. We spent a lot of time focusing on Michelle Obama’s garden and working on a focused vegetarian meal. It was something I will never forget.
On what’s next
Marcus’ in the MGM National Harbor in Baltimore [by Parts and Labor Design], and Red Rooster in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood [by Design Duncan Miller Ullmann]. If the city speaks to me and I can learn from the city and we really feel we can do something there, we’ll do it. We probably get three Red Rooster requests every week. But we want to be careful and cautious about our growth and protect [our brands].
