As a world renowned chef, Marcus Samuelsson has cooked for royalty, celebrities, and even heads of state. Despite all of the fanfare surrounding Samuelsson's meteoric rise to fame, he remains the most proud of his humble background. Born in poverty-stricken Ethiopia, his mother died of tuberculosis when he was a mere two years old. He and his older sister Linda were fortunate to be adopted by a middle-class Swedish couple, Anne Marie and Lennart Samuelsson. Together they embraced their new family, thankful for the opportunity to pursue a better life.
Growing up in Sweden presented its challenges for an Ethiopian child with Caucasian parents; however, Marcus' innate drive for success knew no bounds. A talented soccer star, he honed his skills in hopes of a future on the athletic fields. His adopted family supported his dreams, even fostering new ones when circumstances changed, so that Marcus would feel connected to his home country. Of course, the strongest influence in his new life was the time he spent every Saturday with his grandmother Helga preparing the chicken for the family meal. Her love for cooking shared with her precious grandson would eventually set the stage for his lifetime of culinary experiences.
YES, CHEF is the extraordinary memoir of one man's journey to cross racial barriers to pursue a lifelong mission of blending flavors and cultures in a tough culinary world. Samuelsson's raw emotions expose a vulnerable man who managed to claw his way to the top while never forgetting from where he came. The behind-the-scenes depiction of the cut-throat mentality of aspiring chefs in some of the world's most famous kitchens is truly fascinating. Samuelsson's ease of writing sets this book apart as a literary treat worthy of being devoured at family mealtimes around the world.
It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. Marcus Samuelsson was only three years old when he, his mother, and his sister—all battling tuberculosis—walked seventy-five miles to a hospital in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Adaba. Tragically, his mother succumbed to the disease shortly after she arrived, but Marcus and his sister recovered, and one year later they were welcomed into a loving middle-class white family in Göteborg, Sweden. It was there that Marcus’s new grandmother, Helga, sparked in him a lifelong passion for food and cooking with her pan-fried herring, her freshly baked bread, and her signature roast chicken. From a very early age, there was little question what Marcus was going to be when he grew up. Yes, Chef chronicles Marcus Samuelsson’s remarkable journey from Helga’s humble kitchen to some of the most demanding and cutthroat restaurants in Switzerland and France, from his grueling stints on cruise ships to his arrival in New York City, where his outsize talent and ambition finally come together at Aquavit, earning him a coveted New York Times three-star rating at the age of twenty-four. But Samuelsson’s career of “chasing flavors,” as he calls it, had only just begun—in the intervening years, there have been White House state dinners, career crises, reality show triumphs and, most important, the opening of the beloved Red Rooster in Harlem.
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