Marcus Samuelsson’s New Cookbook Celebrates Black Excellence

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now, from the business of government to the business of actually trying to stay in business, like other restaurateurs, the chef, Marcus Samuelsson, has been hit hard by the pandemic. But during this crisis, he is helping those in need, particularly those of color. It’s a community he celebrates in his new book “The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food.” Here he is talking with our Walter Isaacson about his journey from Ethiopia to Sweden to the United States and why restaurants are more than just places to eat.

WALTER ISAACSON: Thanks, Christiane. And, Marcus Samuelsson, welcome to the show.

MARCUS SAMUELSSON, CHEF AND RESTAURANTEUR: Thank you so much for having me. Very excited to be on.

ISAACSON: Great. You came to this country with 300 bucks in your pocket and it took you 25 years to build up your restaurant empire. And then after COVID hit, it all came down in 10 days. How are you doing with things like the Red Rooster and your wonderful restaurants?

SAMUELSSON: Well, this has been by far the toughest year not just for me but all of us, right. It’s been challenging as a small business how to maintain and we’re getting tested. But I do think as an immigrant, it gives me a lot of strength. You know, I’ve been through things before. As a person of color, I’ve been tested before. But it’s definitely taking a toll. But I’ve also really felt gratitude to be part of several communities. One, the community of Harlem, and two, the community of hospitality.

ISAACSON: You talk about being tested before as an immigrant. You know, you’re from Ethiopia by way of Sweden, and then to Harlem. Tell me what you learned on the trail that’s helping you through this COVID crisis.

SAMUELSSON: Well, what I’ve been thinking a lot about this year is that this is so much bigger than yourself, right. And sometimes the worst that can happen can also be the best that could happen. In my case, me and my sister and my brother had tuberculosis. My mother sadly passed. But me and my sister survived and that’s how we got adopted from Ethiopia to Sweden, and it really saved me. So, when things like that has happened to you in your life, you just kind of like — I’ve been through some tough beginnings, but also very grateful to be here. And it’s very similar to this experience. It’s so much larger than yourself. You got to just hang on if you can. I’ve been very fortunate. My family’s healthy, my wife is healthy, my son is healthy. And as long as we are healthy, we can always add value to our community and our business.

ISAACSON: You’ve turned the Red Rooster, your restaurant up in Harlem, into a community kitchen now. Explain what you’re doing and how you’re working with Jose Andres, your friend.

SAMUELSSON: Yes. Well, you know, by yourself you have power. And if you’re part of the larger community collectively, I think that this year I really thought helped me focus on the individual but also as a collective. And as a collective, I’m part of the hospitality community. I called Jose Andres very early in March and said, hey, (INAUDIBLE), we’ll be there. We’ll feed the community. And we started with 400 meals a day for the neediest to 1,500 meals per day. So, between March 15th and October 15th, we served over 225,000 meals for the neediest and the first responders. And it completely changed us as a community, but also it made me realize what it means to be a restaurant during a pandemic. What you can do as a collective. And it transformed me as a person but also us as a business.

ISAACSON: Over the course of this coronavirus pandemic, have you seen the change in the type of people you are serving?

SAMUELSSON: Oh, this was in the beginning, particularly being — living in Harlem and serving Harlem, it was homeless people, the neediest. Then we served the first responders and the hospital. And then it was my neighbors. After months of this, right, this is still going on. The line became middle class, working class and I was — I’m pleased that we can be there for our community. And it was very often the homeless and the people that are used to waiting on shelter living that showed the line, that really showed they have experience on waiting. They knew how to wait through social distancing. So, there was a lot of beautiful human interaction in that line that I saw that I never expected because we had the least experience of this and someone has experience of waiting on line knew more about how to do this.

ISAACSON: After Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, we realize that the restaurants were not just places for food, but places of community where we rallied around and figured out what we’re going to do. Have you seen that in the restaurant community during COVID?

SAMUELSSON: Yes, I mean, this is — I’ve seen the best in people in the toughest time, right. This just didn’t happen in Harlem. Same thing happened in Newark and in Miami and across the country. The power of one and the power of us together. I mean, Walter, what you have to understand, independent restaurant, that community employs between 11 million and 16 million Americans, right. The word restaurant means to restore your community. But sometimes the word restaurant is almost too big. You know, fast food chains are part of restaurants but they’re very different than independent restaurant and we created the Independent Restaurant Coalition to specifically help the mom and pops. Once the mom and pops in your neighborhood goes away, our neighborhood vastly change, right. It’s going to be completely dark at night, it has impact on jobs but also on safety and also quality of life. So, it’s very important for us to keep the independent, mom and pop restaurants alive.

ISAACSON: Do you think the independent mom and pop restaurants are more likely to be thriving after COVID or do you think it will help the change more?

SAMUELSSON: Sadly, I think the big guys with access to finance and can wait it out and traditional bank loans will definitely be able to survive this. I’m not sad they’re surviving. It’s good that business is open. But this will have a huge impact on mom and pop, particularly minority, black and brown business, as we know, have been impacted by COVID in this proportionately. Both with access to hospital and access to health care, right. And also, traditionally, we know financial solutions in those communities are much harder. So, post-COVID it’s going to be a very different America in black and brown neighborhoods but also wherever there are small businesses.

ISAACSON: Congress is wrestling with an aid package. What do you think should be in that for the restaurant industry?

SAMUELSSON: Well, I would love to see the aid package really restore what we got this summer, something similar to that. Because small businesses or family business, I really don’t like the word small businesses because for the families it’s their own business. And if we don’t get a meaningful package, mom and pop restaurants in this country will go away. Not just for a couple of months, Walter, forever. The restaurant business is not a high margin business to begin with. So, we’ve been through our toughest year. We need the aid right now. We need to go back to work. Right now, you’re looking at 11 million people where 70 percent of the people, we’re asking to stay home. This is going to have impact beyond restaurant. This is going to have impact on the barbershop. This is going to have impact on all small retail. And we need that aid sooner than later.

ISAACSON: Give me a sense of how hard it is to start up a restaurant and to then restart a restaurant once it’s been closed?

SAMUELSSON: This is — it is extremely hard and challenging to start a restaurant because normally we are also not traditionally getting, you know, access to banks. This is very much — you fund raise through friends and family. And if a restaurant is doing great, you might have a 6 percent to 8 percent profit margin, which means that you don’t have a lot of money stashed away for a two-month closing. So, you’re basically running that restaurant month to month. And when you’re closing a restaurant and then starting back up, first finding the staff, getting all the systems back up, and the margin of 7 percent to 10 percent is not going to help you restart the restaurant. This is not a 30 percent, 40 percent profit margin business where you can stack away a lot of money for a better day. This is literally like living month to month. And — but it is also an industry that takes care of so many neighborhoods and employs — one of the largest employers in this country. So, it’s meaningful not only for the neighborhood, not only for the family, but for us as a country. So, when you save American restaurants, you’re actually saving American and it is by far the most diverse industry. So, immigrants like myself that might be hard to get into other work fields, restaurant is very often the first place you can get a job but also the first place where you can own your own business. So, this is vital for so many different reasons.

ISAACSON: You have a gorgeous, delectable new book out that’s not only a cookbook, not only recipes, but a celebration of black food, a celebration of the immigrant experience and a celebration of a lot of chefs, old and new, who you write about, almost biographically. You titled the book “The Rise.” Let’s start with that. Why is it titled “The Rise”?

SAMUELSSON: It was an opportunity, Walter, to really celebrate black excellence when it comes to American food and cooking. I felt like — just like a lot of American history, the African-American experience, the way it’s been written into our history wasn’t correct. This was an opportunity to celebrate incredible chefs like Ms. Leah Chase and also honor the people that are not so famous that actually contributed much more to American food. There are five original cuisines in American food that are directly linked to the black experience. Southern food that we consider — we call sometimes soul food. Low country from the Carolinas, Cajun, Creole and barbecue. These are all iconic important food cultures that all stems out of the African-American experience. So, we need to get the authorship, the correct authorship to that. We need to create and set tables for more memories so we can honor the people who created it and we need to get people to be inspired to be in our industry, and that’s really why we want to create the rise.

ISAACSON: Is there a particular essence to which you would call black food?

SAMUELSSON: I do. I mean, it obviously stems from West Africa. Comes out of the slave trade. Like a lot of food comes out of war and in a very, very complicated difficult and horrible situations. And I would say, making it delicious with very — small means, right. So much of all the black experience when it comes to food is not having enough but also being ingenious. Bringing the rice to the Carolinas, for example, bricking okra from the continent to America and so many incredible indigenous dishes that comes out of West Africa. When I think about a jollof rice from West Africa and I think about a jambalaya from your town, New Orleans, they’re exactly similar, right? So, where one inspired the others. And there are many dishes like this that started in Africa, came to the Carolinas and became American dishes.

ISAACSON: You celebrate Leah Chase, who died at 96 a year or so ago, and her restaurant in New Orleans was more than just a restaurant. It was a hub of the civil rights movement. It was a hub of the community. How important are people like Leah Chase? You’ve dedicated the book to her.

SAMUELSSON: Well, Ms. Leah Chase is an American icon. You know, she passed away last year at 96 years young. Her restaurant started in the ’40s. Think about that. In the ’40s. And now, her daughter, Stella, still runs it Dooky Chase. But, obviously, she was a game-changer in so many different ways. For the first 20 years or so, white and black customers couldn’t eat in the same restaurant but Ms. Leah Chase broke those laws because she wanted to serve everybody. But also create jobs for everybody, right. And restaurants for African-Americans meant different things. Very often they have to go to Ms. Dooky Chase — Leah Chase to gather, (INAUDIBLE) vote and so on. So, you know, we can’t think of restaurants as safe haven today but that’s what they were in black communities. They were job creators. They were safe havens. And there was also a place where you always knew you could get a meal. Even if you didn’t — couldn’t pay directly that day, you could put it on the bill and by the end of the month, go and pay, clean up your bill. And Leah was there for her community. She was in and of her community.

SAMUELSSON: My favorite recipe in the book, I think, and I’m going to try it out, is the casava dumplings with callaloo puree, which Nina Compton does it by (INAUDIBLE). Tell me about the influence of Caribbean culture on black food.

SAMUELSSON: Ms. Nina Compton is for me — it’s not a coincidence that she’s in New Orleans and she’s really learned so much and Leah mentored her as well. But, you know, Nina’s food, Nina coming from St. Lucia, training in New York with Danielle and so on, she’s done — she is black excellence, right. She’s come from a place. She’s gone this hard training. And now, she and her family have their business. And Caribbean food has influenced America in so many different ways but it’s also localized. When you talk about black food, it’s not monolithic. There are those five (INAUDIBLE) that we talked about. But there is also through the Caribbean and through immigration. We learned that St. Lucian food is different than Jamaican food, for example. We learned that Cuban has a different journey than Dominican food. So, it helps us in a geographically way really understand how blackness is not one thing, it’s plural. And that’s really important the way we understand that Portuguese and Polish food is not the same just because they start with P and come from Europe.

ISAACSON: When I was reading “The Rise,” I was loving the recipes. But by the time I got to the end of your wonderful book, I realize it wasn’t just about food. It was about race and about class and about equity. Tell me how those things fit in, both in your book and what we’re going through today.

SAMUELSSON: I think food is politics in so many different ways because it is a trading commodity, right. So, it is linked to culture, identity and race. Who owns something, who cannot own something. And I think it’s very important to have these conversations. You think about the slave trade, for example. You think about food from Africa very often doesn’t get its props when it comes from Africa. For example, if you’re going to give away a box of chocolate this holiday season, you might say, hey, I’m going to buy my loved ones some Belgian chocolate. The coco bean is not in Brussels. The coco bean is in Ghana. So, we are programmed already to give a lot of good food quality to Europe. You’re going to think about a French coffee or an Italian roast X, Y and Z coffee, that coffee bean comes from Kenya or Ethiopia. So, again, the authorship where the food comes from to identify that is very, very important. And we are on a journey and something like “The Rise” can continue to have that conversation to open that door up. That is very important because as we trade, we also think about that culture from a higher quality standard. It inspires us to go to that country, it inspires us to think about people in a different context.

ISAACSON: Marcus Samuelsson, thank you so much for joining us and good luck with the restaurant and good luck with your book, “The Rise.”

SAMUELSSON: Thank you so much for having me.