Five Fits is always a labor of love. Getting to feature some of the world’s most stylish folks is an honor, and that honor is doubled when I can feature someone I already admire. It’s a bonus when I meet them and they exceed my expectations, as was the case with this week’s subject, the famed chef Marcus Samuelsson. Having been a fan of his Food Network output over the years, and having watched him give interviews on shows like Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, I felt like I knew him, and I’m happy to report he is exactly the same in person as on television. There’s not an ounce of artifice in those appearances, and his humility is astounding given all that he has accomplished and continues to accomplish.
Marcus and I met at his Chelsea restaurant, Hav & Mar, to discuss how he fell in love with cooking and style, how being a Black chef has changed from the start of his career to today, his new West Elm furniture and homeware line and the inspirations behind it, and plenty more.
Fit One
Hat by FlameKeepers; T-shirt by Diop; polo by Awet; pants by Gucci; sneakers by Adidas.
What made you fall in love with cooking? Are there any specific memories you can pin to your foundations?
I would say there were really two things happening at the same time. I loved the process around being with my uncle on a little island. It wasn’t just cooking, but it was fishing, too. He was smoking mackerel. He gave away fish to the elderly or the people who couldn’t go out. It was a total 360 of hospitality. He was always met with smiles because he gave away food. Sold some, but he gave away a lot, too. He was retired, so he had extra time. Then my grandmother’s cooking—there wasn’t the stress there was in my mom and dad’s house, because they were working and then putting dinner down. It was these slower vibes and the joy that everybody had around their food that I was really drawn to.
How about clothing and style?
For me, style comes from when I was a small child, and going to my early grades and at the class photo, I always stood out. My mom said, “You guys have to look great because everyone in this community is going to know who you are, whether you get in trouble, whether you get good grades, bad grades, caught in a fight.…” Through music, just looking at my idols, Bob Marley and the dreads and the super-tight jeans with no shirt, or looking at Prince and Michael Jackson, or David Bowie, even early hip-hop. It wasn’t just music that I was drawn to. It was the style, and the music, and the total package that was so different from growing up in Sweden, where it was a lot of minimalistic design and the whole point was not to stick out.
Fit Two
Hat by FlameKeepers; shirt by Gant; pants by Post Imperial; shoes by Converse.
Does style play any role in the kitchen?
When I started cooking, the kitchen was still back of the house. The food was just supposed to come out. Particularly for the Black chef, it’d been a long, anonymous labor. We did the food, but we didn’t get the credit—always supposed to be back of the house and not be seen. Style comes from a rebellion to all of that. You look at Red Rooster’s kitchen as an open kitchen. You look at Hav & Mar’s kitchen; it’s a huge open kitchen where we are proud to present femme vibes led by Fariyal [Abdullahi], our executive chef. And with that, once you open it up, the chef’s attitude and style is going to come out. We’re inspired by where we are, being in Chelsea or being in Harlem. Art, music, vibes, style come from that.
Does style play a role in entrepreneurship?
Being a Black chef, sometimes it can be a bunch of choices of “Where does your Black identity fit?” In the beginning of my career, I just focused on the food and didn’t know how to weave in Africa or my Blackness. Now, in my career, I couldn’t be prouder, both because the industry has changed and because there are journalists and writers and audiences there. Both are appreciated, and the climate is very different from twenty years ago. When I do something around my style, I don’t hide any of it. Even my partnership with West Elm and going into home and furniture, we asked, “How do you define home?” For me, it’s Africa, Scandinavia, and New York. And in our line, in our food, in our decision-making of making the pieces, it talks about all of that. Our patterns are driven from Africa. Our furniture is very often Scandinavian style with a little bit of vibe. It took me a whole career to get to that point. I hope now that I can bring joy to the guys that I’m working with so they can get to their identity more quickly and enjoy it, and don’t have to go through all that.
Fit Three
Hat by Keith James; outer shirt by Descendant of Thieves; shirt by Post Imperial; pants by Tier NYC; socks by Ozone Socks; shoes by Paraboot.
You beat me to it, but I was going to ask you about your West Elm collaboration and what else you’re currently working on.
The collaboration is a big next step for me. It’s about evolving as a chef and as a team. I remember designing Red Rooster with the team and coming up with bespoke pieces, like a sofa that I did myself, and took a picture and sent it to the architect. When you’re a craftsman, when you stay in a pocket, you’re told that you’re going to stay in this pocket. It takes guts to go outside that pocket wherever you are—whether it was Michael Jordan playing baseball instead of basketball or Pharrell stepping into fashion. You need this moment of pop culture to say, “Oh, this is possible.”
You have such an illustrious career. Could you name your top three moments?
Coming to America, just actually being in America, and being able to be in the industry, knowing that I’ve shaped the industry hopefully for the better and making things more inclusive in our restaurants. That’s a moment that took twenty-five to thirty years of work. Both the Hav & Mar and Red Rooster openings are a big milestone, because they’re far apart, but they’re also an expression of labor. There’s so much joy. Sharing Fariyal and the team’s success now gives me a lot of joy. But it wouldn’t have happened without Rooster, so it’s all sort of in one. I want to leave the third open, because I am very much excited about what’s next. Where are we going with food tech? I want to stay curious. I think there’s much, much more. This partnership is a way to show that, and we are excited about that. I don’t want to look back. The past has informed the present, and that will inform the future.
Fit Four
Hat by Keith James; shirt jacket by Fried Rice; pants by Awet; shoes by Roma Rio.
If you’re ever in a creative rut, what do you do to bring yourself out of it?
I need nature. Being that I grew up on an island with not a lot of people, always on walks, or on runs, that’s where it's happening. Or I paint. But again, it’s solitude—by being within yourself, by yourself.
What is your current favorite thing to cook at home?
Right now me and Chef Sherry are on the menu at Metropolis downtown. We cook things, send them to each other, and go back and forth. That could be halibut or char, sorrel, or purple basil or something. That is a pretty painful thing, but it’s good. We go through it and she’s pushing me, which is great. Then I can just switch that off by cooking something with my son, Zion. We did this scallop with his favorite pea sauce. We just took a bunch of peas and mint and pureed it. It came out great, with a little bit of avocado, and it was just so much joy. I need those moments. It’s just total fun. Maybe we have too much garlic in there, maybe not.
There’s no such thing as too much garlic.
Exactly. We’re just going for it.
Fit Five
Hat by FlameKeepers; shirt by Descendant of Thieves; jacket by Gant; pants by Canali; shoes by Dapper Dan x Puma.
Do you have a favorite place to travel, and if so, why?
I love a place like Rio. It has music, it has soccer, it has vibes, it has creativity. There are islands. You can go to a soccer game in Maracana. You don’t know if the stadium’s going to come down. It’s got urbanism, but it’s also got a beach. It’s just a vibe that there’s always something really cool about to happen. You can sit on the beach and enjoy the whole theater of people walking by.
What’s one thing you wanted to talk about in interviews but you never get the opportunity to?
Identity is something that I arrive at, and it’s very hard to express through an interview. Very often, I express it through my work. I just feel more comfortable and better at [communicating] it through the food or through what we create. That’s the work. Check it out at Hav—that’s where I’m at. Articulating that at the end of the journey, too, is something you can only share if you have a moment where you feel like the person interviewing you is actually interested in your identity, or opens it up in a different way. We all have it and we all search for it, and we are all probably struggling with it up and down depending on what’s going on in our lives. But it’s important to have enough self-belief on this shoulder and enough humility to do the work on this shoulder and then just enter the world through that.
If you had to wear one outfit for the rest of your life, what would it consist of?
It would be a really good pair of old rugged Levi’s jeans. I’d probably wear an Ethiopian band. And a really comfortable jacket. I love an old, vintage jacket. I have this killer Louis Vuitton one. I’d wear a V-neck shirt [underneath]. I love when something is from the seventies, so I know it’s done right. It’s not glued together; there was somebody sewing it. Vintage clothes always fit me better. Who wore this before? What was the journey? If you can ever meet that guy, what was his story? You know what I mean?
