Award-winning chef and author Marcus Samuelsson was born in a small village in Ethiopia. When he was two years old, he and his mother and older sister came down with tuberculosis. His mother walked with him and his sister 75 miles to the capitol of Addis Ababa to the hospital where hundreds of others were waiting outside, also seeking treatment. Somehow his mother got treatment for her family but she did not survive. Marcus and his sister did and were adopted by a Swedish family in Goteberg, Sweden.
It was here, in Sweden, that Marcus began to learn about cooking from his Swedish grandmother Helga. He loved helping her in the kitchen. He also loved playing soccer and dreamed of a career as a professional footballer. But despite his best efforts, hard work and natural ability, he never grew big enough to make it into the professional ranks.
he switched his career goal to becoming a professional chef, went to trade school in Sweden, and then was off to Switzerland, France and finally the United States. He’s won cooking competitions and been a judge on some reality cooking shows. His restaurant in Harlem is Red Rooster and his new memoir is “Yes, Chef.”
