Yes, Chef: A Memoir (Hardback) By (author) Marcus Samuelsson

Full bibliographic data for Yes, Chef

Title

Yes, Chef

Subtitle

A Memoir

Authors and contributors

By (author) Marcus Samuelsson

Physical properties

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 319
Width: 163 mm
Height: 236 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight: 630 g

Audience

General/trade

Language

English

ISBN

ISBN 13: 9780385342605
ISBN 10: 0385342608

Classifications

BISAC category code: BIO026000
Dewey: 641.5092
BICMainSubject: BGA
Nielsen BookScan Product Class: T4.0
BICMainSubject: BM
Dewey: B
Dewey: 641.5092
BISAC category code: CKB068000
BISAC category code: CKB000000

Illustrations note

illustrations

Publisher

Random House USA Inc

Imprint name

Random House Inc

Publication date

26 June 2012

Publication City/Country

New York/US

Main description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE “One of the great culinary stories of our time.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. 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. Yes, Chef chronicles Marcus Samuelsson’s 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. Yes, Chef is 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. Praise for Yes, Chef “Such an interesting life, told with touching modesty and remarkable candor.”—Ruth Reichl “Marcus Samuelsson has an incomparable story, a quiet bravery, and a lyrical and discreetly glittering style—in the kitchen and on the page. I liked this book so very, very much.”—Gabrielle Hamilton “Plenty of celebrity chefs have a compelling story to tell, but none of them can top [this] one.”—The Wall Street Journal “Red Rooster’s arrival in Harlem brought with it a chef who has reinvigorated and reimagined what it means to be American. In his famed dishes, and now in this memoir, Marcus Samuelsson tells a story that reaches past racial and national divides to the foundations of family, hope, and downright good food.”—President Bill Clinton

Review quote

Advance praise for "Yes, Chef" "The Red Rooster's arrival in Harlem brought with it a chef who has reinvigorated and reimagined what it means to be American. In his famed dishes, and now in this memoir, Marcus Samuelsson tells a story that reaches past racial and national divides to the foundations of family, hope, and downright good food."--President Bill Clinton "I've read a lot of chefs' books, but never anything like this one. Marcus Samuelsson has had such an interesting life, and he talks about it with touching modesty and remarkable candor. I couldn't put this book down."--Ruth Reichl, bestselling author of "Tender at the Bone " "Marcus Samuelsson has an incomparable story, a quiet bravery, and a lyrical and discreetly glittering style--in the kitchen and on the page. I liked this book so very, very much."--Gabrielle Hamilton, bestselling author of "Blood, Bones, & Butter" "The pleasures of this memoir are numerous. Marcus Samuelsson's life, like his cooking, reflects splendidly multicultural influences and educations, and he writes about it all with an abundance of flavor and verve. A delicious read."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Biographical note

A James Beard Award-winning chef and author of several cookbooks, Marcus Samuelsson has appeared on "Today, Charlie Rose, Iron Chef, " and "Top Chef Masters, "where he took first place. In 1995, for his work at Aquavit, Samuelsson became the youngest chef ever to receive a three-star review from "The New York Times." His newest restaurant, Red Rooster, recently opened in Harlem, where he lives with his wife.