Marcus Samuelsson

Marcus Samuelsson is an Ethiopian-born Swedish-American chef and restaurateur whose three-decade career has made him one of the most-iconic figures in 21st-century American culinary culture. He was born Kassahun Tsegie on January 25, 1971, in Abrugandana, Ethiopia. Following his mother's death from tuberculosis when he was three, Samuelsson and his sister were adopted by a Swedish family and raised in Göteborg, Sweden, by his adoptive parents Ann Marie and Lennart Samuelsson.

He trained at the Culinary Institute in Göteborg before working in apprenticeships across Switzerland, France, and Austria through his early twenties. His career-launching American role came in 1994 when he joined the kitchen of Aquavit — the celebrated New York Scandinavian fine-dining restaurant — and became its executive chef in 1995 at age 24. Aquavit earned three stars from The New York Times under his leadership, making him the youngest chef ever to receive that distinction at the time.

He left Aquavit in 2009 and founded Marcus Samuelsson Group, which has opened multiple celebrated restaurants over the following decade. The 2010 opening of Red Rooster Harlem — at the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue — became one of the most-influential American restaurant openings of the 2010s. The restaurant's deliberate fusion of African-American Southern food, Ethiopian flavors, Scandinavian technique, and contemporary Harlem cultural identity made it a national reference point for new-American cuisine. He has subsequently opened restaurants in Stockholm, Bermuda, Miami, Newark, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas.

Samuelsson has authored eight bestselling cookbooks and won the 2003 James Beard Foundation Best Chef New York Award and the 2007 Outstanding Chef Award. He has hosted multiple American television shows — The Inn Chef on Food Network (1998–2001), Chopped All-Stars, Top Chef Masters (winner of season 2, 2010), and the No Passport Required on PBS (2018–2020). He published the 2012 memoir Yes, Chef, which became a New York Times bestseller. He has continued to work prolifically across television, books, and restaurant operations.

His name Marcus is from the Latin Marcus, an old Roman family name possibly connected to the Roman god Mars. Marcus has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for decades.