Yes, Chef Quotes

“Hard work IS its own reward. Integrity IS priceless. Art DOES feed the soul.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“But one of the things I have learned during the time I have spent in the United States is an old African American saying: Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I'm a big believer in the negligee, that nearly invisible screen standing between you and the object of your desire.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“For months beforehand, I fielded calls from British media. A couple of the reporters asked me to name some British chefs who had inspired me. I mentioned the Roux brothers, Albert and Michel, and I named Marco Pierre White, not as much for his food as for how—by virtue of becoming an apron-wearing rock-star bad boy—he had broken the mold of whom a chef could be, which was something I could relate to. I got to London to find the Lanesborough dining room packed each night, a general excitement shared by everyone involved, and incredibly posh digs from which I could step out each morning into Hyde Park and take a good long run around Buckingham Palace. On my second day, I was cooking when a phone call came into the kitchen. The executive chef answered and, with a puzzled look, handed me the receiver. Trouble at Aquavit, I figured.
I put the phone up to my ear, expecting to hear Håkan’s familiar “Hej, Marcus.” Instead, there was screaming. “How the fuck can you come to my fucking city and think you are going to be able to cook without even fucking referring to me?” This went on for what seemed like five minutes; I was too stunned to hang up. “I’m going to make sure you have a fucking miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you fucking black bastard.” And then he hung up.
I had cooked with Gordon Ramsay once, a couple of years earlier, when we did a promotion with Charlie Trotter in Chicago. There were a handful of chefs there, including Daniel Boulud and Ferran Adrià, and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them. As a group we were interviewed by the Chicago newspaper; Gordon interrupted everyone who tried to answer a question, craving the limelight. I was almost embarrassed for him. So when I was giving interviews in the lead-up to the Lanesborough event, and was asked who inspired me, I thought the best way to handle it was to say nothing about him at all. Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out. To be honest, though, only one phrase in his juvenile tirade unsettled me: when he called me a black bastard. Actually, I didn’t give a fuck about the bastard part. But the black part pissed me off.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Food’s my only bag. It’s my gig, my art, my life. Always has been, always will be. I’m always battling myself – the part of me that says I can and the part of me that says I can’t. My greatest gift has been that the part of me that says “I can’t” is always, always just a little bit louder.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“If only my love was a net that could keep the flies out. If only my love was a net full of food for all the hungry bellies. I understand why so many people have given up on Africa - no one wants to say we are leaving a continent of people behind to tough it out in a hundreds-of-years-old war of survival, but we are, and the reason is because the level of change it would take to make a difference, to heal past wounds and chart a new path is mammoth, gargantuan, almost unimaginable.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Bookstores are a giant present waiting to be unwrapped, full of stories and discoveries and lives.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Just us two men," my father said, my father who had so longed for a son that he had flown paper planes--adoption forms in triplicate--all the way to Africa to make his dream come true.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I'm OK with firing people when they fuck up, but canning them when they've done nothing wrong - that's painful. [on the layoffs needed after 9/11 hit the business]”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“That gave us enough time to get a shot of Ethiopian coffee, espresso style. Nothing tastes better than Ethiopian coffee; almost everywhere you go, it is roasted right before it’s brewed. In the United States, we think it’s a big deal if you wait to grind the beans before you make coffee. Here, the benchmark for freshness is miles higher.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“It wasn’t just the flavors that knocked me on my ass. It was seeing different people holding it, preparing it, serving it. Sometimes the chefs were not in the white jackets, and it wasn’t only men, it was women, it was children, it was everyone. There were Indians, blacks, Koreans, mixed people. When I had my own restaurant someday, I thought, I would never rule out someone based on race or sex or nationality. I wouldn’t do it because it was egalitarian, I’d do it because cutting people out meant cutting off talent and opportunity, people who could bring more to the table than I could ever imagine. I felt like I was climbing aboard a new food train, one that I’m still on to this day.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“A guy like Franz could talk smack all day about my Afro, my lack of brains, my mother, her alleged lack of virtue.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I’m always battling myself – the part of me that says I can and the part of me that says I can’t. My greatest gift has been that the part of me that says “I can’t” is always, always just a little bit louder.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“The more ground I covered in New York and the more people I met, the more I came to see the difference between international and diverse. Interlaken was international, and I got off on the energy of being around so many different cultures and languages there. But in the end, they were all going back to where they came from. ... New York was different. There were divides along lines of race and class, but whereas the ethnic Swiss owned Switzerland and the ethnic Swedes owned Sweden, everybody in New York had a stake in where they were. Maybe you had to have a place this big to allow there to be a hundred different New Yorks living side by side, but almost everyone I saw seemed to move with a sense of belonging. This was their city whether you liked it or not.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“One thing I believe with all my soul: Don't try to guess somebody's ceiling.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“One of the reasons that people enjoy coming to a great restaurant is that when an extraordinary meal is placed in front of them, they feel honored, respected, and even a little bit loved.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Don't draw attention to yourself. I know it sucks, but try to be as small as possible."
He would never get on the line, I could tell. He wasn't going to last. A lot of Americans had this problem in the European kitchens. It wasn't that they didn't love cooking, it was that they didn't have the skills. They'd done their research and paid their dues and worked just as hard as I had to get to restaurants like Victoria Jungfrau and Georges Blanc. But to get ahead in that culture, you have to completely give yourself up to the place. Your time, your ego, your relationships, your social life, they are all sacrificed. It's a daily dose of humility that a lot of Americans find difficult to swallow. Guys like Jeremy could never fully tamp down the desire to be seen and heard, to stand out and make his mark, to go up to the chef and get noticed by chatting: "I just want to say hi and thank you."
The thing is, small talk with a commis is the last thing on a chef's to-do list.
Correction: It's not even on the list.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I spent so much of my life on the outside that I began to doubt that I would ever truly be in with any one people, any one place, and one tribe. But Harlem is big enough, diverse enough, scrappy enough, old enough, and new enough to encompass all that I am and all that I hope to be. After all that traveling, I am, at last, home.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“made it my business to be tough in the ways that they were tough—on the inside, where it counted. The”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Mormor did. My father had brought our frying pan from home”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“I carried Torsten’s plate over to the table, placing”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“Just us two men," my father said, my father who had so longed for a son that he had flown paper plans--adoption forms in triplicate--all the way to Africa to make his dream come true.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef