Yes, Chef : A Memoir
Author: Marcus Samuelsson
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Imprint: Random House
Pub Date: June 26, 2012
ISBN: 9780385342605
I’ve had the pleasure of dining at Aquavit in New York City some years ago when Marcus Samuelsson was chef there. It was one of my first experiences with what would become Fusion. I never met him, but I fell madly in love with his food. The combinations of flavors, the unusual, but delicious pairings were amazing to me. Some time later, I saw him on a talk show and was impressed by his quiet, poised demeanor and his obvious love for food.
Reading his memoir was a revelation. He is unflinchingly honest in his storytelling while keeping it completely engaging and enjoyable. There are lots of descriptions of food of course, but this memoir is more about the man and his love affair with food, rather than making the food the star. It’s an inspiring life story about a man with drive, ambition, determination and lots of love.
While reading YES, CHEF, I fell in love with Sweden, a country I was never much interested in visiting. I found myself transported to another place and became entranced by it. It is very clear that Marcus Samuelsson loves his adopted country and the people that loved and nurtured him there. Reading about his trips to the country of his birth, Ethiopa, were equally well written. He really takes you there in his writing. I thought as much as I loved his food and loved his television appearances that his writing would be subpar. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by a well written and completely wonderful book that I couldn’t put down and was sorry when I turned the last page. What shone through the most was his deep love for his grandmother Helga and it made me think of my own memories of my grandmother who taught me to love food.
Anyone who loves food will love this book, but it will appeal to a much wider audience than foodies. Good writing is good writing and this book is a fabulous adventure. What an amazing life!
Book description from the publisher:
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 NewYork 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. At Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fufilled his dream ofcreating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room-a place where presidents and prime ministers rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, bus drivers, and nurses. It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, livingin America, can feel at home.
With disarming honesty and intimacy, Samuelsson also opens up about his failures-the price of ambition, in human terms-and recounts his emotional journey, as a grown man, to meet the father he never knew. Yes, Chef is a tale of personal discovery, unshakable determination, and the passionate, playful pursuit of flavors-one man’s struggle to find a place for himself in the kitchen, and in the world.
About the author:
A James Beard Award-winning chef and author of several cookbooks, Marcus Samuelsson has appeared on The Martha Stewart Show, Today, Iron Chef, and Top Chef Masters, where he took first place. His newest restaurant, Red Rooster, recently opened in Harlem where he lives with his wife.
Suggested hashtags: #amoxcallireviews #books #cooking #marcussamuelsson #food #memoir
Disclosure: A free copy of this book was furnished by the publisher for review via NetGalley, but providing a copy did not guarantee a review. This information is provided per the regulations of the Federal Trade Commission.
