Marcus Samuelsson on His Rise, Roots, and The Chefs Who Shaped Him!! (Part 1 of 2)

Adrienne and Joe are joined by culinary icon Chef Marcus Samuelsson for Part 1 of a two-part conversation exploring his remarkable career, early New York breakthrough, global training, and the mentors who shaped his philosophy. In this episode, we also discuss: Training across Europe and Japan and blending global technique with personal heritage Finding cultural identity through Swedish roots, Ethiopian heritage, and fine dining Lessons and mentorship from industry legends like Charlie Trotter and Leah Chase Building access, equity, and visibility for chefs of color and women in the industry Opening Red Rooster and harnessing food as a driver for community pride in Harlem Spotting talent, leading teams, and mentoring the next generation of culinary leaders Rapid-fire “Yes Chef, No Chef” on social media, industry awards, and restaurant longevity Follow Marcus: @marcuscooks Follow the show: @chefscutpod Follow Adrienne: @chefadriennecheatham Follow Joe: @insta.flamm

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Adrienne Cheatham?

  Today on The Chef's Cut, we have Marcus Samuelsson. He is one of the most influential figures in the American food scene. And today, he is joining me and Joe right here on The Chef's Cut.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  I'm here because of a tribe of people behind me that saw something in me way before I saw it in myself.

• 0:35Adrienne Cheatham?

  In part one of this series, we're talking with Marcus about his early career.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  I didn't read New York Times. And getting this review, I had no idea that would have impact on my career.

• 0:45Adrienne Cheatham?

  And the importance of mentorship.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  One of the commitments I set to myself, when I get on, I need to go to be part of transforming the industry.

• 0:52Adrienne Cheatham?

  But before we get to our very special guest, Chef's Cut Nation, you know what time it is. We need 10 seconds of your day. Please rate and review the show wherever you get your pods. It really helps.

• 1:10Joe Flamm?

  Age, super excited for this one today. We got one of your mentors, just a massive, massive sphere of influence, Chef Marcus Samuelsson, joining us today. We've been trying to get about for a while. So excited to finally have him here.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  I'm super excited to be here, so thank you for having me, guys.

• 1:26Joe Flamm?

  I mean, your career is unbelievable, the breadth of things you've done from TV to restaurants. It's just, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. It's incredible. One of the things that's crazy, you know, that a lot of people know, but you know, when you were 24, you were the youngest chef at the time to ever get a three-star review from the New York Times. Do you think like coming out so hot, that set the tone for you of like, this is the level I work at, I'm going forever? Or was it an added level of pressure?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  No, it was not an added level of pressure. Actually, coming to New York to work for me was always a dream because I felt fine dining in America was so young. At that point, I worked seven years in Europe and in Japan. So yes, I was 24, but I was also been in fine dining for a minute since I was 16, 17 years old. And in those places, I had to do it in French, in German, in many languages. So just landing in New York where I can do it in my second language, which is English, I felt was so much easier than when I worked in Switzerland.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  If those guys knew that you could speak French, they switched over to German, right? Or if they knew you could speak German, they switched to French, only to get you. So, you know, working at certain level was never an issue for me. It was more about getting over all these hurdles that, you know, my previous generation and my generation came up with, which one of the things that is so great with what's happening in culinary today is the fact that the working environments are better. They're not maybe perfect yet, but they are better.

• 3:06Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's a good point. So you got this incredible review, right? When you were 24 years old, you were so young and you also looked different from every other chef who had a name in New York at the time. But when you got this incredible review, did that change the way that the older cooks and chefs treated you?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  It's New York, you know what I mean? Bobby, Bobby's like, Bobby's like, what's up? Patrick Clark is like, you ain't shit. It's like, it didn't matter, it didn't matter. Like, I love them, those are my uncles, you know? You know, Alfred Potel was like, alright, that was, like, that's maybe the one, like, well, like, that was good. You know what I mean? It was like, everybody, but not so much what they said, they all came through. I remember when I were compared, came for lunch, I remember they all came in, right? And first of all, you have to understand, Adrian, I didn't read New York Times. I didn't know what food and wine was. I didn't know what Bonnath, like, I was like, I was just in my head figuring out.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  And getting this review, I had no idea that that would have impact on my career. It's like, we picked it up, everybody else was happy around me, I was excited too. But I was like, we haven't started, I hadn't launched my, in 96, I launched our tasting menu, 12 courses. In 97, we launched our vegetarian menu. And then in 98, we launched our bite menu, which is 16 courses, right? So in 95, I already like, this is what we're gonna do. So we're getting reviewed on this, it's like, what are you talking about? We haven't even started. So for me, it was just like, let's go to work, back to work, because I'm so in my head of what are we gonna do? It's good sometimes not to know what's out there because you're just focused, right?

• 4:56Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  And my roommate at the time was Danny, which is the culinary director for Jean Georges. And he was working at Von. And Von for me was, there's Von and Les Pinas, those were the two most important restaurants in New York at the time, for me. Very different. Les Pinas was Grey Kuntz, high-end French. If you think about who came out of Grey, that kitchen, Roquefort, Carmelini, Florecardos, rest in peace, et cetera, et cetera. By far, the most way you want to work in terms of chef tree, right? But what both Grey and Jean Georges did at Von was Southeast Asian cooking with French techniques. That's where my head was at, anyway. So I'm like, I didn't, I cooked in Singapore before that, I lived in Japan.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Yes, I did my training in Japan, but in, in just when I did my training in France, the most cooks I worked with in France were Japanese.

• 5:48Adrienne Cheatham?

  Oh.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  So I'm like, this is it, like, I'm going, like, I know about umami, these European chefs don't know about umami, I'm going. And the place to kind of discover that was, for me, in New York, in a new ground, in a new place, where you could do like white soy beurre blanc, like, I needed to know how to make a beurre blanc, I know how to do that, but I'm gonna do it with white soy. You know what I mean? Like, oh, that's just an example of I wanted to do it, you know? So for me, there's two people that really transformed and helped me in that period, very different people. In 96, Charlie Trotter comes into the kitchen, he has Pierre Gagnon with him, and he says, hey chef, you need help. I said, no. And then Charlie said, but I'm gonna help you, right?

• 6:30Speaker 01

  He didn't just take the piss, he's like, I'm gonna edit you, I'm gonna help you.

• 6:35Adrienne Cheatham?

  Wow.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  So I was invited to Chicago every month when Chef Trotter had those amazing, when the world of chef came to Chicago, which makes, you know, fact that Charlie Trotter's first cookbooks, you know, the vegetarian and the original Charlie Trotter cookbooks, for me, it's the most, of my generation chefs are the most influential cookbooks. I would say White Heat, Charlie Trotter's first cookbook is like the basement of our stocks, right?

• 7:00Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's crazy. There's never been a chef that I've worked for, from hotels on the Gulf of Mexico, Chef Chi, who was Canadian, Chinese background. Every chef I've ever worked for had the Charlie Trotter cookbooks.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:12Adrienne Cheatham?

  Every single chef.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Once you're inside, once you're inside that kitchen, Adrian, it was a different world. Not only was it a French background, but it was done through an American lens. And when you do it in a, through an American lens, at that time, it's much broader, right? So Charlie Trotter had kids from the South Side coming in, working in that kitchen.

• 7:30Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  You know, employee number one, all those influences of urban Chicago. He had a, you know, Mexican executive chef, you know?

• 7:39Adrienne Cheatham?

  Guillermo, yes.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:40Adrienne Cheatham?

  My mom knew him.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  You know, Matt, 23, 24 years old, being a sous chef, you know, he had Giuseppe, that's still in Chicago. Like, these are 24, 25-year-olds running probably the biggest kitchen in the world at that point.

• 7:54Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's crazy. Hearing all this and talking about like Charlie Trotter with the vegetarian tasting menus back then, you doing that in 97, and then doing the bites menu where it's smaller courses, but more of them. Chefs nowadays forget that this history started before them. You know, a lot of chefs now, it's, it's like the internet has brought so much information, but also really clouded the history that people have been doing this before you. Like, you, this was groundbreaking for you to have done that small taste menu back then. You know, you think of like Alenia, when they were doing 24 courses in small bites, and people are like, holy shit, that's never been done before. But it's like, actually, actually.

• 8:36Joe Flamm?

  It's like, pick up some cookbooks, it's out there, it's out there, you know? It's, it's incredible.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  That's what's great with a pod like this, because that is a new medium, and you're speaking to a newer audience. But for me, it was always influenced me is hip hop, right? Like Tribe Called Quest and true hip hop for me, because hip hop is, end of the day, your grandma's, your mom's, your daddy's, your uncle's records with some new shit on top, right? What is cooking is the same thing. We stand on these incredible French techniques, adding a look of or into that, but adding some new stuff on top. And I always had to, you know, as a young black chef coming out, and nobody looked like me, I always had to look. I looked at prints, I looked at Basquiat, the painter, I looked at Q-tip. Food, I always knew I could do at a very high level because of my upbringing with my grandma.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  I didn't know the context of how I had to do it, so I had to travel to get that. But I was always writing, still writing. But hip hop and graffiti was turns where you come from the street and eventually into galleries or major concert halls. And I'm like, if they can do it, you know, Q-tip is like maybe two, three years older than me. So I was like, if he can do it at that age, there's really no excuse.

• 9:58Adrienne Cheatham?

  You find the point where you stop trying to fit into one culinary identity. You're not trying to be a Swedish chef. Where did you find that point of developing your own style based on all of your influences?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's a very good question because I don't think in the beginning I had fully. You know, you have to understand as an adopted person, for me, you're almost living a shadow life. Right? One shadow is my birth name, Kasahun Sigai, Ethiopian identity that is on this side. And one side is this Marcus Samuelsson that I, you know, my name that I just got from my parents. And culinary wise, I knew my Swedish identity. I did not know so much my Ethiopian. So in culinary wise, you almost had to go backwards into, I had to back myself into Africa and East Africa. Because it was not food that I grew up with, like herring, mackerel.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  These are the notes, potatoes, fennel. These are the notes that I grew up with. And then maybe once a year, we went to an adopted event and I had dorawat and injera, right? But not true memories from these things. It wasn't until I started to travel, I'm like, as a black chef, I have to look at this differently. When am I going to bring on? And I really planned it out. I'm like, all right, let's just get on. Once I get on, I can bring this in. I was, you know, and I think the blessings of being black is that you have to be very strategic. Like you, you don't have time to play maybe, but you have to be strategic if you want to. For me, there was never a choice to be number two and number three. It's like, that's not going to happen. It's not going to get me to a three star Michelin. I have to be number one.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Every scholarship that was out there, my mom and my dad, it was very like, you have to win this. So being an athlete, working out a lot, I'm like, okay, it's the same thing as sports. You just work harder and you get it. And, and we did.

• 11:53Joe Flamm?

  You know, I remember when you were on Top Chef Masters, and I think the, the thing that struck me right away, it's like, you have this calm intensity to you. And it's just like, it's this calm, collected, and you know, you're saying your background in sports. Like it makes total sense where it's just like, you were at a pace, at a level, at a standard, but it was like, it was smooth. Like it was just like the way you spoke to people, the way you moved to the kitchen. I was like, man, that is, and I think that's why, I think that show is still like one of the greatest shows of all time. But that was such a great season of yours. And in my mind, it was like, oh, this is the difference between a chef and a cook is not just the cooking, but how they carry themselves. You know what I mean?

• 12:33Joe Flamm?

  How they operate, how they deal with things when everything, you know, the flames are to the wall and, you know, shits fall out on the floor and everything's going crazy and they're just like, I got this. I was like, in my mind, I was like, that's a chef. And I think it's like, you know, there just seems to be such an intentionality with the things you do. When you talk about the history, it seems like it just makes sense. You seem to have always known that. It's so impressive. But the way you've built this incredible brand, and I think your, your mentorship is something Adrian and I talk about all the time. And every single chef we've had on the pod who's crossed paths with you, you know, talk about that. And it seems to be just such a pillar of what you do. Was that always the goal or is that something that evolved over years?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  I'm here because of a tribe of people behind me that saw something in me way before I saw it in myself. Right? Whether it was those chefs in Gothenburg, like it's not a culinary mecca, but you know, especially back, it's actually better now. Right? We have two star Michelin restaurants, but back then, but they were very clear. If you are serious about this, you gotta go through France and we can help you because some of us have done that. Right? I, I, my mentor was the only star chef out of that tiny place. And he helped me. Getting to Japan, I had to ask someone for help. Getting to a three star Michelin restaurant.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  My mom and dad was like, just go to a one star. I said, no, I can't. It has to be three star.

• 14:01Joe Flamm?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  And my dad's like, well, this is actually good that you're not getting it because you're not ready. You know, it's better if you get it by the end of all this six year journey. And I got it to my, my last year. But there's so many people that some anonymous, some are visible, that are very clear in my journey. Like being in Switzerland, it was very fair, but it was very difficult. But they mentored me, they set me up to be ready for France. And, uh, but, and then Leah Chase, like I had Charlie Trotter on one side and then Leah Chase, um, rest in peace. She came up to New York and always like, you have to really, she really pushed the black side of me

• 14:47Speaker 01

  in a way that I fully wasn't ready for as a 25 year old to understand. She was like, during the civil rights movement, we did this. We hosted the dinners here. What are you doing? Like she really pushed me and she's 70 at the time, you know what I mean? But like on fire, like a, you know, 40 in her head, 40, but like the, you know, really a force of nature. So having Charlie and Leah, very, very similar in many ways, leaders, but also very different, how they went about their craft. And she always said to me, you have to be, you have to be ambitious. You're the one that have to be ambitious.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  We need to see you do stuff. And I, you know, I fully didn't understand what she meant, but then like, as I got older, I started to understand. So it was always important to have these two people pushing me, you know?

• 15:42Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's really beautiful because they're so different, but they both have immense influence in everything that they've done. And that's really cool to hear because you came having lived in so many different countries and with so many different tastes and culinary influences. But black cuisine and black food wasn't necessarily a part of that. So was Leah part of the reason that you like started? I know you lived in Harlem and that had to have been a big influence. Is that how you started? You know, we think of you now as such an inextricable part of the culture, but to hear you say this is like, wow. Is that something that you had to come into?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  I knew as a leading black chef, not only in America, in the world, I have the responsibility. And I don't say that to utter arrogance. I say that just as the reality, that's what it is. And then how do you work off that? Right? Like it's not, it's not something that you, it's not like a hundred meter dash that you win and then taken away. You, you're at a place and then you constantly have to work at it. But what does that mean? It means to open doors, otherwise it's pointless. So I was very specific about, I wanted to get it. I always put up goals and once we got the second three star review from New York Times, I felt like, okay, there's a different journey. Now, now there wasn't a fluke. I'm now established. I did not have a cookbook.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  There was never like a major Scandinavian modern cookbook done. So those were goals of mine that were important. But then there was also interruption, right? 9/11 happened in between, which who cared and who knew if fine dining would ever come back. Right? So it was like this stuff that happened that is so much bigger than yourself. And we weren't back four months. New York City wasn't back as a fine dining scene. That fall, it took us probably two years to get back to what it was. So it was different and then it had changed. You know what I mean? Like restaurants like Kraft came back and changed the food scene. You know, David Chang opened Momofuku, so the scene constantly evolved, right?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  But I was like, this is amazing because with David, pallets opened up. That was, I think, just transformed America forever. You know what I mean?

• 17:58Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  And for me, it's about being curious. Like I love my craft, the good, the bad, the evil. Like I love my craft and I love the people in my craft. So as long as you are committed to that, decades will change, but you're going to stay in it. And if you're curious, you're going to learn from all those decades. Like what I learned from the Keller and the Charlie Trotter decades, I bring that in to the kind of like Colicchio and Chang decade. And then you can bring that in to the next decade.

• 18:39Adrienne Cheatham?

  Let's not gloss over the fact that Red Rooster had that same effect on the cuisine of Black America and the Black diaspora in the Caribbean and West African. You were cooking with flavors and East Africa as well. You were cooking with ingredients and flavors that had not been a part of the culinary conversation yet. And we've had so many people on the pod who were leaders in their sphere. Nina Compton, bringing that in, you know, we've talked about Kabawa, Tatiana, but all roads lead back to Marcus, you know? So let's, let's not forget the, uh, the kind of diaspora that you've created because

• 19:20Adrienne Cheatham?

  you gave chefs of all different cultures, not just Black, not just Swedish, but of so many different cultures, the recognition that their food mattered and that their food could have a place on the table at any restaurant of any type of level of dining. And I lived in Harlem before Red Rooster opened. So I remember sitting at Chez Lucienne next door when there was this construction zone. And I'm like, what's going on here? And then when Red Rooster opened, it completely changed the neighborhood. It brought pride to the culture and the restaurants. And it gave people in Harlem like me a sense that our neighborhood matters, our cuisine

• 20:03Adrienne Cheatham?

  matters. We don't have to go to Chelsea or downtown to get world-class food from a world-class chef. This is happening in our backyard.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:12Adrienne Cheatham?

  So, you know, thank you for that.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Thank you. Well, thank you. And you know, Mike, for me, when you're passionate and you, you talk about Paul, right? When Paul came to Aquavit, right away, Richie, Tracy and Paul came in at the same time, same age. And they're, they're younger than the line, the line cooks. But like Nelson and I, like after like five minutes, you see these two guys operating the 18, 19, hanging with 25, 26 year olds that are like picked people out of Europe to come and work for us.

• 20:48Adrienne Cheatham?

  Wow.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  And Paul does it, they do it very differently. Paul is just the smileiest, most curious Beijing kid you will ever meet in your life. He's like the same guy now at 45 as was at 18, the nicest kid you will ever meet. And Rich is more intro, but super skilled early, super focused. So for me, it's like, we're trying to build the best band and team we possibly can. It's, and they're down, they're down. We didn't, it didn't matter. And there's something for me that I always took pride in recognizing talent and giving them a platform. So Richard was writing on that tasting menu at 20 because he was that good. Paul was asking question at 20.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  And we had to almost like, oh, what, what if we do that chef? And, you know, so be open to curiosity. It was never, um, anything that I looked at. You can see yourself, you know what I mean, in that journey? But I think, I would say with Rooster, you know, everyone look at the success. I'm going to look at it a little bit different. So I knew as a creative, if I would have stayed in Midtown, I was empty. I wouldn't have been in food anymore. You come to a level where you can do it, you can hang. And I think the highest we got Aquavit was to top eight or top nine in New York City. And I'm like, all right, this is great. And this is before Michelin and all that. So I'm like, great.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  But I felt like if I'm going to have impact, I really need to look at this differently. And many things in my life happened, right? Like I met my birth father. I knew I, I got to find out that I exist as a brother. So again, with the shadows, when you are getting closer to your true self as a Black person or as any ethnicity, like you have to like, okay, go towards that, right? Cause I knew that that was getting closer to Casa Hoon and Marcus, not just working. Cause that's the only thing I've done up until that point, you know? And obviously, you know, my mom was like, after nine 11, she's like, you need to move. You need to move where you're happy. And Harlem became that place.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  And the coolest thing about Harlem is that there are real institutions, both in people, but also we got Schaumburg, we got the Y, we got real places. And everyone I met that was elder, they were like, you have to open a restaurant here.

• 23:13Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yes.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  And I was called up by my Angelo, actually said, all you are chef, you need to open in Harlem.

• 23:21Adrienne Cheatham?

  That is the biggest flex I've ever heard.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, but my own like six brownstones in Harlem. I cooked for her on 127th Street. I cooked for her on 120th, 20th Street. I cooked for her in North Carolina, like, and so she's summoned a lot of people and said, you're in real estate, you do it here. You're in cooking, you do it here. So it was very much in, in order to get invited to her house, she's going to ask you, are you, are you getting closer to this? Are you getting close? Are you doing it?

• 23:49Adrienne Cheatham?

  Right.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? You can't front.

• 23:52Adrienne Cheatham?

  Joe and I have talked about your family tree, which I mean, learning about Rich Teresi and Paul Carmichael also working there. There's so many people that we know that came through your family tree, but there's still so many people that we did not know about.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:07Adrienne Cheatham?

  So this is wild, but the, like, I remember, like, it's more visible now because a lot of the people that you've mentored have gone on to do Top Chef like me. Like, if you recall, the thing that kind of started giving me some attention was a New York Times mini documentary. And it was called Taste Makers. And they called the top chefs in New York and said, who's the person that works for you that you think needs some attention, some love? Who's one of those people that makes things happen in your orbit, but isn't a big name? And Marcus gave them my name. So I had a little camera crew following me around Harlem for a solid week. It was wild. And then you put me up for Top Chef. You brought Gail Simmons to Red Rooster so I could meet her.

• 24:51Adrienne Cheatham?

  So the people who have done Top Chef now are more visible. But do you remember one of the pieces of advice you gave me when going to do Top Chef?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:01Adrienne Cheatham?

  There were several, but one of them that stuck out the most was, I think it might have been David Burke. When you did Top Chef Masters, you said he was having a freak out. He was mad about something.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:14Adrienne Cheatham?

  And you went up to him and you grabbed his mic and covered it. And you said, chef, this is not how you want to look on television.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:20Adrienne Cheatham?

  And so you told me like, don't forget, that mic is always hot. And if you want to say something and you don't want it to be on blast, rub your mic so they can't hear what you're saying. Because if they don't have the audio to go along with the video, they can't use it.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:36Adrienne Cheatham?

  That was such valuable advice.

• 25:37Joe Flamm?

  Yeah. Adrian gave me that one too, when she got there. There's, if you watch a lot of the judges tables, there's a lot of me and Adrian standing next to each other, like we have really big itches on our chest because we're talking mad shit and don't want people to hear.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Love that. I love that. You know, I would say Adrian, mentorship goes both ways, right? So I always like to have a younger mentor that mentors me and guides me in a way that they probably at the moment don't even understand. And I would say, I met you and Ayesha at the same time. And the two things I never saw in this, we start Michelin kitchens, or even through that the whole journey was chefs of color and women. And one of the commitments I said to myself, when I get on, I need to go to these two bases and be part of transforming the industry. And at Rooster, in the beginning, I think we did really well with setting up Black culinarians and, and people of color in management.

• 26:34Adrienne Cheatham?

  And your opening chef there was a woman of color, Andrea.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Of course. Yeah. Amazing. Andrea is just like out of this world in talent, you know? Of course she's with Floyd. But meeting you and I at the same time showed me that the underbelly of talent that, and this is actually Leah again, you have to help us go from anonymous to visible. Anonymous to visible, because that changes pay rate, that changes everything. And you were anonymous. You were a sous chef at Le Bernardin. And you could have stayed a sous chef in Le Bernardin, which is an incredible lifetime job, but you could also do more than that. Do you know what I mean?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Like to someone said, hey, you're going to be a sous chef at a, the highest rated restaurant in America for 30 years. You know, sign me up, right?

• 27:28Adrienne Cheatham?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  But to be visible, it's a different thing, you know? And I was working in television, but as a back and food producer. And she had to do a dish that is extremely difficult to do. My foie gras ganache, super difficult to do. And everyone's going to mess it up. You know, we own version 52 at this time. And then Nai does it. And I just line up the whole kitchen and screaming inside, I'm like, who did this? I want to know. Stop everything. I want to know who did this? And this young woman in the restaurant, I did it. I said, this is perfection. This is the best version I've seen.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So like it's you and I, Andrea, it's a lot of people that made me, it's like, you know what? You thought about this. Now you got to actually make it come alive. You really got to set up a space so they're going to be successful with all the things it means to be a woman of color in this industry and give them enough space. So yes, we have Fariah and other amazing chefs out there in the space, many, many, many more. But I think a lot go back to Andrea, you and Ayesha, because it really made me think about it from a very different level.

• 28:51Adrienne Cheatham?

  We could talk forever about all this. There's still, we've still just barely scratched the surface, but we do want to get into a new segment. This is the first time we've ever done it, chef. You are the first person. And in honor of, in honor of the title of your memoir, Yes Chef, we are going to call this segment, Yes Chef, No Chef. So I'll ask you a few questions and you tell me if that's a good idea or no. Okay? So honest opinion off the top of your head. Is New York still the best food city in America?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, chef.

• 29:28Adrienne Cheatham?

  Does every great chef or aspiring great chef need to work in fine dining at some point?

• 29:35Speaker 01

  No chef.

• 29:37Adrienne Cheatham?

  Ooh.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:38Adrienne Cheatham?

  Is talent more important than discipline?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Maybe chef. You know what I mean? Like it's really a.

• 29:47Joe Flamm?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's a tough yes, no question there, Chef Adrian. It's a little bit, uh.

• 29:55Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's what we do here. We ask the tough questions.

• 29:57Joe Flamm?

  Yeah. Sometimes.

• 30:01Adrienne Cheatham?

  Do, do restaurants care too much about being Instagrammable?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yes, chef.

• 30:08Adrienne Cheatham?

  Okay. Here's a good one. Do New York Times stars matter more to a New York chef than Michelin stars? Or to any chef, New York aside?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Wow. I would say yes, chef. It does. I, I, yeah, still it does. Actually, I would say, yeah. Ooh, that was good.

• 30:30Joe Flamm?

  That was a good one. That was a good one.

• 30:33Adrienne Cheatham?

  See, I was cooking up something special for you, chef.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I know.

• 30:38Adrienne Cheatham?

  And the last one, is opening a restaurant harder than keeping a restaurant great over time?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  No. Keeping a restaurant, and that's why you think Le Bernardin and places like that, it's, it's incredible.

• 30:54Joe Flamm?

  Mind boggling.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:55Joe Flamm?

  Mind boggling.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Being consistent is one of the hardest things. Anyone can get on at a certain level, but, uh, keeping that is one of the hardest crafts you can do. And that's why any OG restaurant that's been around for a long time, you're just like hats off because we all know what it takes. Uh, I think it's, it's amazing. We can, there's 20 restaurants or whatever it is in the States, in New York, in America that's been around like that. Not even on that level, but like each one, you get to nod and be like, oh my God, that's incredible.

• 31:30Adrienne Cheatham?

  That's it for part one of our interview with chef Marcus Samuelsson. Be sure to come back next week when we dig in and talk about so much more. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and follow us on IG. For Joe Blam, I'm Adrian Cheatham, and this has been the Chef's Cut, life beyond the past.