Because Marcus Samuelsson was most recently on the The Next Iron Chef and because he is a frequent judge on Chopped, I was very excited to read his memoir. I knew that he had an interesting upbringing but I didn't know much about it.
Well I definitely learned A LOT about him and his life and while I still think he's a brilliant chef-in fact I'm going to his restaurant, Red Rooster, in Harlem with some friends next week, I don't necessarily think he's the nicest guy in the world. Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia and was adopted as a very young child to Sweden. His birth mother, quite a heroic lady, walked him and his sister miles upon miles to a hospital nowhere near their small village in Ethiopia. She passed away at the hospital and there wasn't a lot of information about his family so they were adopted by a Swedish family.
Samuelsson definitely speaks very highly of his family in Sweden and clearly views them as his family. Initially as a child he wanted to be a soccer player and played throughout high school but ultimately was deemed too small and short to be an effective player. He was extremely disappointed but ended up turning this passion and drive into cooking.
The book chronicles his growth as a chef as well as his personal life. There were definitely some decisions in his personal life that he made that I really disagreed with but he thought that he was doing the right thing in pursuing his passion.
He's definitely become a success here in New York and at this point, internationally. I do thing that he's advanced the profession of chefs that are not the norm. He's written a cookbook specializing in Ethiopian food and I am really looking forward to trying his restaurant out.
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