![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/534c7142841348b91edd5a2561f16269a1-Marcus-Samuelsson-lede.rsquare.w700.jpg\")
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\n Marcus Samuelsson in 1998, three years after he became executive chef at Aquavit.
\n Photo: Courtesy Marcus Samuelsson Group\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a beautiful Tuesday morning in Central Park, and Marcus Samuelsson is ready to Rollerblade. I meet him at 10 a.m. at a spot he suggested \u2014 the Duke Ellington Statue on 110th Street at Fifth Avenue, across from the Africa Center \u2014\u00a0and right on time, the chef comes flying down the pavement in purple track pants, a checked Dapper Dan Gap sweater and a red and white Kangol hat.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re making our way \u2014 I\u2019m on a Citi Bike, following behind \u2014 to Skate Circle near the Rumsey Playfield, where \u201980s-house DJs and skaters get together. Samuelsson says he spent countless weekends here when he moved to the city 30 years ago from Sweden to work at the previous midtown location of Aquavit<\/a>, a Scandinavian stalwart even then. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a lot of money and living in the city was expensive, so I\u2019d Rollerblade everywhere,\u201d he says. He remembers having to abandon a date after blowing his entire $40 weekend budget on lunch and a movie, and making trips for Ukrainian dumplings on the Lower East Side.<\/p>\n Rollerblading was also a form of professional transportation as he moved around the city to source ingredients while listening to Nas or Mobb Deep. \u201cI had recently spent time in Singapore and Japan, and I wanted to find some salty Asian ingredients,\u201d Samuelsson says. \u201cOne day, after three weeks of Rollerblading around, I made my way down to Chinatown, where I found this store that sold galangal, lemongrass, and curry leaves.\u201d He couldn\u2019t get deliveries to the restaurant, so he would skate down by himself, buy what he needed, and carry it back to Aquavit on West 54th Street. \u201cI\u2019m thinking no one else uptown knows about this spot and then Jean-Georges<\/a>\u2019s sous-chef walks in and I\u2019m like, Fuck \u2014\u00a0my secret\u2019s out.\u201d<\/p>\n The stakes at the time were unusually high. Less than two months after Samuelsson started at Aquavit, the restaurant\u2019s sous-chef died of heart failure, the result of an accidental overdose. Shortly after, Aquavit\u2019s owner, H\u00e5kan Swahn, tapped Samuelsson to become executive chef; he was 24 years old and had been told on multiple occasions that, as a Black man and an immigrant, he would never own a New York City restaurant. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be the one to close the kitchen, and I didn\u2019t go to France and come to New York City just to snort coke in a bathroom,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n What he wanted to do was turn a conservative Swedish restaurant into a destination for Michelin-caliber cooking by applying new ideas to Nordic techniques. \u201cNo one really knew what Swedish food was at that time, but I did,\u201d he says. \u201cRather than trying to make the food at Aquavit more Swedish, I tried to make it more worldly.\u201d In the fall of 1995, the then\u2013food critic of the New York Times, Ruth Reichl, took notice<\/a> of Samuelsson\u2019s \u201cdelicate and beautiful food, walking a tightrope between Swedish tradition and modern taste.\u201d Reichl gave Aquavit three stars, a rave. Samuelsson still remembers how she tried to tease out the ingredients he used to give his recipes depth, such as curry leaves in a chilled tomato soup with shrimp, or lobster salad \u201cpiqued by the sweetness of melon, tamed by the blandness of fromage blanc and sharpened with mint\u201d that was, Reichl wrote, \u201cmaddeningly delicious.\u201d<\/p>\n The review changed the trajectory of Samuelsson\u2019s career. Today, he is such a fixture of food TV and publishing that his story is well known to anyone who follows food. He is friends with the Obamas. Doechii, Ayo Edebiri, and Law Roach all attended the Met Gala pre-party he hosted this spring. But in 1995, it was hardly a given that a chef born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden would break through. (\u201cI was doing all these events for the restaurant, and people would flat out ask me \u201cWhere\u2019s the chef?\u2019\u201d he remembers, \u201cand I would say, \u2018It\u2019s me.\u2019\u201d) Yet what he eventually found in Manhattan was acceptance, a home with enough diversity to complement every part of his background. \u201cI was on my midtown shit while I was at Aquavit,\u201d he tells me, \u201cbut I was also going to Harlem.\u201d<\/p>\n Uptown he saw the next part of his New York life start to unfold. \u201cI used to live in Hell\u2019s Kitchen right across the street from Alberta Wright\u2019s restaurant, Jezebel,\u201d Samuelsson says. \u201cThe restaurant was an extension of Black Broadway at that time. I\u2019d sit there with my one beer for two or three hours because that\u2019s all I could afford, but Alberta was kind enough to let me sit there all night.\u201d He found that same sense of belonging after moving. \u201cOnce I moved to Harlem, I got to experience so many official institutions here, but there are people like Lana Turner, who are institutions in their own right.\u201d He says her guidance was instrumental in helping him eventually open Red Rooster<\/a> in 2010: \u201cYears ago, she told me, \u2018I know you\u2019re looking to open a restaurant here. You need information and help.\u2019 She invited me into her house and showed me what Black excellence looked like from her lens.\u201d (After Red Rooster opened, Samuelsson put Turner\u2019s hats on display<\/a> in the restaurant.)<\/p>\n As our morning in Central Park comes to a close, he walks me toward Lincoln Center, where we park my bike. We hug and I tell him I\u2019ll see him uptown, where we live about ten blocks from each other. Then, on his way to meet a potential investor, Samuelsson takes off again, blades pounding the sidewalk as he glides down the avenue.<\/p>\n EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Grub Street newsletter.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n