Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson

Author:Marcus Samuelsson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780440338819
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN ANOTHER GLASS OF AQUAVIT

AS MY TIME AT GEORGES BLANC CAME TO AN END, I SAT DOWN AND wrote three letters. The first was to an American talk show host I’d watched during my Aquavit internship. He was edgy and funny and, more than anything else, smart.

“Dear Mr. Letterman,” I wrote, “have you ever considered branching out into restaurants?”

I wrote a similar letter to Oprah Winfrey, who was already much more than just a TV personality and would surely see the wisdom of partnering with me.

“Dear Ms. Winfrey,” I wrote. “Nothing could be a better accompaniment to the conversations you have on air every day than a restaurant.…”

Just to be safe, I also wrote to Aquavit’s founder, Håkan Swahn. “If you hire me,” I promised, “I will make Aquavit one of the top ten restaurants in the city.”

Only Håkan wrote back.

I was twenty-four years old and I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I didn’t know how American rating systems worked, I didn’t know the difference between Gourmet and Bon Appetit. I just knew that of all the places I’d lived, New York was where I fit in best, and I was willing to give everything I had to get back there.

Aquavit had opened its doors in 1987, about the time I walked through the entrance of Tidbloms in Göteborg as a culinary student casting about for my first internship. Håkan Swahn and his chef Tore Wretman quickly distinguished their restaurant from the smorgasbord houses that had, for so long, been the face of Swedish food in America. They paid tribute to the spirit and ingredients of Swedish cuisine, but they also understood they were in New York where sophisticated diners prized bold flavors and fresh ingredients.

Over the years, Aquavit ran into trouble finding the right match for the kitchen’s helm. All of Swahn’s executive chef choices were Swedes, but that was no guarantee they could maintain the level of excellence to which Swahn aspired. One was dutiful in the execution of Swedish classics but lacked initiative to break new ground; another was too Swedish, paying almost no attention to the tastes of the American customer. The August before I returned, Swahn had made a risky move by hiring away a sous-chef from Bobby Flay. This was years before Bobby became famous for his Throwdown! television show, before Iron Chef and Boy Meets Grill, but he had already made a mark with his two restaurants, Mesa Grill and Bolo, as well as by winning the Rising Star Chef of the Year Award from the James Beard Foundation. Flay may have been a fourth-generation Irish-American New Yorker, but he had fallen in love with southwestern and Cajun cooking, both of which distinguished him then and still. Maybe because his own story was so unorthodox, Bobby didn’t see any problem in hiring Jan Sendel, a young Swede who’d come to New York to be an actor and had no formal culinary training whatsoever. Bobby had his hands full with Jan, whose passion was a blessing and a curse.

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