Marcus Samuelsson
EXCLUSIVE
ADD TO MY SPEAKER LIST
- James Beard Award-Winning Chef and Restaurateur
- TV Personality and Host, VOX/Eater's 'No Passport'
- New York Times Bestselling Author, 'Yes, Chef', 'Make it Messy', and More
- Entrepreneur and Founder, Food Republic
- Talks at Google
- TimesTalks
- Crain’s New York Business
- New York Public Library
- Whole Foods
- Kraft Heinz Company
- A Financial Institution
- Thuzio
- Food Bank for the Heartland
- Qualtrics, LLC
"Marcus was absolutely fabulous! He was personable with the staff , major donors, and entertaining. It is going to be hard to top him. He related to our mission and did a fantasy job helping drive home how important community is when fighting hunger. Excellent Excellent Excellent!"
-Food Bank for the Heartland"The feedback was great! They said Marcus was an absolute hit with the audience and everything went swimmingly."
-Thuzio"Marcus delivered an amazing session! His conversation with our moderator was fluid and insightful. Marcus opened up for Q&A at the end of the presentation and we had really great engagement from the audience as well. With our event including a lot of business content, the session was a perfect way to mix things up and keep our audience engaged."
-A Financial Institution"Marcus was thoughtful, personable, and left us wanting more!"
-Kraft Heinz Company"We’ve received amazing feedback from our team members. Marcus is truly inspiring and energizing!"
-Whole Foods"How WONDERFUL it was to have Marcus Samuelsson here--I loved every moment--from the arrival to going to the Special Collections (I hope you will be able to return) to of course our moment on stage together. The joy and strength of Marcus' vision, the intelligence, seriousness and soul of his responses, the humor as well."
-New York Public Library
Cooking and Conversation with Marcus Samuelsson
James Beard Award-winning chef and Owner of the famed Red Rooster MARCUS SAMUELSSON loves to cook for a crowd. Samuelsson expertly balances an insightful and inspiring moderated conversation with an interactive live cooking demo, engaging audiences of all kinds. This unique and memorable format can be programmed in person or virtually.
Virtual Interactive Cooking Demos with Chef Marcus Samuelsson
James Beard Award-winning Chef and Owner of the Red Rooster MARCUS SAMUELSSON loves to cook for a crowd. In his virtual cooking demonstrations he shows guests how to make something for a special occasion or how to upgrade that cozy Tuesday night supper - even if using ingredients you have in your fridge. Marcus can share the recipes and ingredients in advance so guests can cook along. Cooking and chatting with Samuelsson feels like having a friend in your kitchen, and is a special treat for your guests.
Yes, Chef
MARCUS SAMUELSSON was only three years old when he, his mother, and his sister—all battling tuberculosis—walked seventy-five miles to a hospital in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Adaba. Tragically, his mother succumbed to the disease shortly after she arrived, but Marcus and his sister recovered, and one year later they were welcomed into a loving middle-class white family in Göteborg, Sweden. It was there that Marcus’s new grandmother, Helga, sparked in him a lifelong passion for food and cooking with her pan-fried herring, her freshly baked bread, and her signature roast chicken. From a very early age, there was little question what Marcus was going to be when he grew up.
In this inspiring speech, Samuelsson shares his remarkable journey from Helga’s humble kitchen to some of the most demanding and cutthroat restaurants in Switzerland and France, from his grueling stints on cruise ships to his arrival in New York City, where his outsize talent and ambition finally come together at Aquavit, earning him a coveted New York Times three-star rating at the age of twenty-four.
But Samuelsson’s career of “chasing flavors,” as he calls it, had only just begun—in the intervening years, there have been White House state dinners, career crises, reality show triumphs and, most important, the opening of the beloved Red Rooster in Harlem. At Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fufilled his dream of creating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room—a place where presidents and prime ministers rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, bus drivers, and nurses. It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America, can feel at home. With disarming honesty and intimacy, Samuelsson also opens up about his failures—the price of ambition, in human terms—and recounts his emotional journey, as a grown man, to meet the father he never knew. The audience experiences a tale of personal discovery, unshakable determination, and the passionate, playful pursuit of flavors—one man’s struggle to find a place for himself in the kitchen, and in the world.
