While working in Austria, Marcus got involved in a one-weekend stand with a young woman and she became pregnant as a result. When she followed him to Switzerland, he put her into a position where she was forced to pull the eject button. Once he received the “staging” appointment in Switzerland, he had broken up with her mentally. One of the first victims of this effect was his first girlfriend. His efforts paid off in the end with accomplishments to include: (i) Executive Chef at Aquavit, a NYC restaurant focused on Swedish cuisine (ii) winning Top Chef Masters (iii) serving as the guest chef for President Obama’s first state dinner on the occasion of the visit of the Indian head of state to the US and (iv) opening his own restaurant “Red Rooster” in Harlem.īut within that overarching story, there were a number of sub-stories, the first of which, in my view, is a cautionary tale about the collateral damage of blind ambition. The book traces his struggles to gain a foothold in the industry and the travels to countries far and wide in order to pursue opportunities. From his early years in Sweden, Marcus trained to be a soccer player but after being booted off the team due to his (relatively) delicate physique, he turned to cooking- an activity that he had grown to love while helping his grandmother prepare family meals. Marcus was born in a map-challenged village in Ethiopia and was adopted, along with his sister, by a loving, Swedish, middle-class family after the untimely death of his birth mother. The book is, first of all, the quintessential American tale the rise from obscure origins to the pinnacle of the chosen field.

Marcus Samuelsson’s Yes, Chef: a memoir (Random House, 2012) is a multi-faceted, semi-anthropological, page-turner of a book that traces the author’s life from his origin in the wind-blown, sun-drenched, fly-infested deserts of Ethiopia to the pinnacle of the chef scene in New York City, one of the world’s gastronomic capitals. We are lucky to have contributor Keith Edwards share his thoughts on Marcus Samuelsson’s memoir “Yes, Chef”.

Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson