Hospitality Design - October 2016 - 114

chefs

Photos courtesy of Hamilton Princess & Beach Club and Nicole Franzen

special feature

Marcus' at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club,
designed by Parts and Labor

MARCUS
SAMUELSSON
Marcus Samuelsson Group
Restaurants

Red Rooster, Ginny's Supper Club, Streetbird
Rotisserie, and American Table Café and Bar,
New York; Uptown Brasserie, JFK Airport; Marc
Burger, Chicago; Marcus', Bermuda; Kitchen
& Table, Sweden and Norway; Norda and
American Table Brasserie and Bar, Sweden

On early food memories

Cooking meatballs with my grandmother [in
Sweden] was always a big thing for me. I didn't
think about being a chef, it's just what you did.
I wasn't watching TV. We were berry picking,
mushroom hunting. Our family was in action.

On big breaks

That happened over different times. Getting
accepted to work in a three-star Michelin
restaurant [Georges Blanc]; receiving three
stars at Aquavit [from the New York Times, the
youngest person at 23 to ever receive such an
accolade]; obviously cooking for President Barack
Obama; and opening Red Rooster [in Harlem].

On choosing Harlem for Red Rooster,
Ginny's, and Streetbird
My mom was always on me in terms of, 'Why
aren't you opening something in the community
that you live? Why do we always have to travel to
your experiences? Why do you only open things
that are expensive?' I had just moved to Harlem,
and opening Red Rooster-a local restaurant in
a local community-answered that. The beauty

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about Rooster is that you can sit with us and
have cornbread and beer, or you can sit and have
uptown chowder with lobster, so it doesn't ever
exclude what type of experience the consumer
wants to have.

On opening American Table at New
York's Lincoln Center

Everything we do is around culture, and
Lincoln Center is one of the biggest world-class
destinations for culture. With American Table
[our goal is] to serve very simple food. It's a café,
but before we were there, it had a lack of this
simplicity of just yummy, delicious food.

On design in his restaurants

[Being Ethiopian] Africa and African pattern
are very strong in my restaurants, and Swedish
influence is very strong too since I grew up in
Sweden around wood, where design actually
matters, and being an architect and designer is a
very prominent job. Design is everything I think
about in terms of how to match the hospitality
and the food. It starts with design.
For Marcus' at the Hamilton Princess in
Bermuda, I felt the island had good food, but
it didn't have a restaurant that felt like New
York in terms of design. We have African
pattern with local style and of course a lot of
Scandinavian touches in terms of wood and
coloring.
At Red Rooster, you experience Harlem-
that's the narrative. My partner Andrew
Chapman and I wanted to do jazz downstairs,
and that's why we built an old-school supper
club, while upstairs is focused on the bar and the
kitchen. We built this big, voluptuous bar where
the light comes from the kitchen, so it's really
this cornerstone.

On cooking for the president

It was an amazing opportunity to be the selected
chef to do his first state dinner. It's something
you have to do in a very short time, 44 minutes
for four courses to be precise, but it was also a lot
of fun for the staff and team too. We spent a lot of
time focusing on Michelle Obama's garden and
working on a focused vegetarian meal. It was
something I will never forget.

On what's next

Marcus' in the MGM National Harbor in
Baltimore [by Parts and Labor Design], and Red
Rooster in London's Shoreditch neighborhood
[by Design Duncan Miller Ullmann]. If the
city speaks to me and I can learn from the city
and we really feel we can do something there,
we'll do it. We probably get three Red Rooster
requests every week. But we want to be careful
and cautious about our growth and protect
[our brands]. hd
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Hospitality Design - October 2016

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