Yes, Chef (38 page)

The stress of the show, combined with the stress of the state dinner, was intense. As if on cue, my back gave out. The pain was unreal, but I couldn’t give up. Being a chef is an incredibly physical job. Standing for hours on end, the brutality of the kitchen heat, the burns, the fires, the lifting—Mario Batali wears those Crocs everywhere not because he’s a fashion victim but because they give him some physical
relief. I’m strong because I’m a runner but my back is liable to give out on me at any given time. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, when I’m on the floor and I can’t move, I can hear my mother berating me when I came home from Belle Avenue after hours of lifting huge sacks of flour, potatoes, and trays and trays of meat. “Macke,” my mother said. “Are they working you too hard?” And it’s true: Everywhere I worked from Belle Avenue to Victoria Jungfrau to Georges Blanc to the cruise ships to Aquavit, they worked me too hard. And I was glad for it. It’s what I signed up for. I manage to look young and strong in photos. But my back, the premature arthritis in my hands, the way my teeth are literally falling out—they tell the story of a lifetime of service. A chef’s life
is
one of service, even in the age of
Top Chef
and Food Network stars. It doesn’t matter if they send a fancy town car to pick you up, you can’t sit on your butt in a comfy leather armchair and cook an incredible meal.

On a show like
Top Chef Masters
, the stuff they ask you to do is so grueling that you have to focus, otherwise you might as well pack up and go home. They don’t really care about what chef comes from what acclaimed restaurant, or how many stars you’ve won. Filming
Top Chef Masters
was the kind of punishing eighteen-hour day that only someone who works like a chef can stand. During the shoot, there was no peace. One a.m. you’re done. Two a.m. you’re done. Then five hours later, seven a.m., you’re back on the set. You know how on
Real Housewives
you see those grown women acting like monsters? Part of the monstrosity is the schedule: It will break you down.

What I loved about the whole experience is that we were all over the city. We were based in downtown LA, but our events could be anywhere. We cooked for people’s weddings. We cooked for the creators of
The Simpsons
. We cooked in the parking lot at a Stanford-USC game. Tailgating. I didn’t even know the word
tailgating
. I’d never been to a football game in my life. And all these fans had been there all night, sleeping in their vans, drinking beer for breakfast. It was like a cook-off. Each chef had a tent set up, and the fans came by
each tent and tasted. But what the show really does is test your will. It knocks you off your pedestal. It’s popular because it gets to the heart of things, what cooking is so much about: knowing what dish is appropriate, for this moment, in this location. And then doing it.

Still, you start to realize that you’re not in control the way you are in the kitchen back home. What you thought you did well doesn’t come across as three stars because you are not cooking in a restaurant. Maybe your food sat for twenty minutes because the judges were deliberating over someone else’s dish. Maybe you were so tired, your back gave out, and you couldn’t whip your cream properly. There are so many other outside factors. It knocks you down a peg. And the elimination process is very, very, very, very humbling.

I never worried that I was going to get sent home. I never looked at what the other people did. But I always felt that if I did
me
, I would give myself a chance of winning. My stuff was good, and as the rounds went by, I was still there. I stuck around, and worked hard. But I never won anything until the last three days. I was coming from behind the whole time. Sometimes I was on the losing side, but I managed to hang on.

I ended up winning this series of the show, and it meant so much to me because as cocky and arrogant as I sometimes seemed, I knew that it would help me open the Rooster. I had my partners by the time the show began to air and we were all surprised at how much press it got. I couldn’t walk down a street in New York without seeing my face on a bus or a billboard. I sat on subway trains, the way I had a gazillion times before, only now I was sitting underneath an ad with my picture on it. It was amusing and slightly disconcerting to watch people scan from the ad to my face and back again. I’d shake my head no, “Nah, not me.”

In Harlem, though, folks knew better. Once it started airing, I couldn’t walk down the street without the hood letting me know how they felt.

“We’re rooting for you, Marcus.”

“When you going to open up that restaurant?”

“Show ’em what you’re working with, Marcus.”

“Where’s the restaurant going to be?”

“You gonna have fried chicken on the menu? The original Red Rooster always had the best fried chicken.”

“Yes,” I would answer. “There will definitely be fried chicken.”

“How about chitterlings? The original Rooster used to serve chitterlings and champagne …”

At the end of the show, I wish I could have been like one of those R & B stars at the Grammys thanking everybody from their record label to their boo, from Jacob the Jeweler to God, for hooking them up. Because Harlem truly blessed me during that competition. Like the B.o.B. song, they let me know that win or lose, they were my safety net. They were never ever going to let me fall.

A
FTER WINNING THE COMPETITION
, I celebrated by taking the red-eye from Los Angeles to Washington, DC. I checked into my hotel room, showered, and ran over to the White House. In an instant, I was in a different landscape, faced with a wholly different challenge. I had to laugh because for everything I just went through, it was nothing compared to what I was about to experience in the next twenty-four hours. It’s the White House state dinner. I had to focus and be wholly in the moment. Every day is an important day in your life but some days are bigger than others. Winning a television competition, then flying out to cook at the White House, were two of the biggest days in my life and my career.

The big night had actually come. After endless meetings, phone calls, and tastings, I was going to feed 325 people within 45 minutes. I was exhausted but so excited to see everything we had worked on for several weeks coming together. I will be forever grateful to the very smart and talented White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford for welcoming all of us in her kitchen and helping us feel comfortable so we could do our job well.

The White House had twenty cooks and I brought in ten cooks of my own. I don’t want to just change the race dynamics in a kitchen.
I want to change the gender dynamics in professional kitchens, too. So when I picked the cooks for the White House, I aimed for a fifty-fifty ratio: five women and five men. Not that the food would ultimately taste different, but the experience and how we can come together is important to me. I brought Swedes, I brought some African Americans, I brought some Jews—it was a mixed team. My wife, Maya, doesn’t usually cook with me, but this was so special that I brought her as part of the team.

All along, I was thinking about my mom and what she always used to say to me in pressure situations: “Well, if you want to mess up, this is a good time to mess up!” You know, every time there was a major school test or a big soccer game, that was her way of saying, “Don’t mess up. Don’t stress out, but don’t mess up.” As service was getting underway, I walked through the White House with a smile on my face and my mother’s voice in my head. I was going to feed 325 people, including the president of the United States, tonight. If I wanted to mess up, this was an
excellent
time to mess up.

Although most of the press after the dinner focused on the gatecrashers, it was a magnificent dinner. The Obamas seemed so happy. The prime minister, Dr. Singh, and his wife seemed to enjoy their food. Jennifer Hudson sang. A. R. Rahman, the composer who did the soundtrack for
Slumdog Millionaire
, performed. I didn’t sit in the audience as a guest, with what my grandmother Helga would have called the “fine people.” But I was there. And despite the fact that we were eating outside, in a tent, the service was flawless.

It was after eleven p.m. when the president and Mrs. Obama arrived to greet the staff. We knew they were exhausted, and didn’t have much time, but they were so warm and gracious. Michael helped me cook the entire meal and was so excited and tired at the same time that when he met the president and the president asked him a question, he responded, “Yes, chef.” Obama gave him a classic double take, and we all laughed. It was like a Southerner saying, “Yes, sir” or “Yes, ma’am.” When you spend your whole life in a professional kitchen, when you’re so tired you can’t even see straight, you’re bound to mumble, “Yes, chef.”

———

J
ORDAN
P
RICE IS
an eight-year-old girl who lives in my building in Harlem. She goes to PS 180, which is around the corner, a five-minute walk. I saw her in the hallway one day on my way to work, just after the White House dinner.

“I saw you on TV,” she said.

“You don’t have to see me on TV,” I said. “Come to my house, bring some of your friends from school, and I’ll cook the White House state dinner for you.” And so I made for Jordan and her classmates the same dishes I cooked for the president and his guests: potato and eggplant salad, red lentil soup, green curry prawns, pumpkin pie tart.

Those boys and girls got the same experience as the president of the United States. And I cooked it in my apartment, not at the restaurant, so they could connect the dots: a chef who lives in Harlem in an apartment, with a kitchen no bigger than the kitchen my own parents cook in, went to the White House and cooked dinner for the president of the United States. These are the same lentils the president and Mrs. Obama ate, the same salad, the same tart. I did this in part so my young Harlem neighbors could taste how delicious good ingredients can be when they are assembled with care. It’s all worth it if nine-year-old Amari—who looks like a brown-skinned Rapunzel with her long box braids and big, bright eyes—goes grocery shopping with her father and says, “Hey, Chef Marcus cooked red lentils for me. Let’s get this.” If Keyshawn, a football-loving third grader, asks his mother, “Pleeeaase, can we make Marcus’s potato salad this weekend,” then I will have done my job.

What I served was far less important than how I served it. One of the reasons that people enjoy coming to a great restaurant is that when an extraordinary meal is placed in front of them, they feel honored, respected, and even a little bit loved.

I
N 1948
, L
EAH
C
HASE DECIDED TO OPEN A RESTAURANT IN THE
L
OWER
Ninth of New Orleans. How much room did this country make for her, as a black female chef, at that time? She didn’t care. She didn’t ask to be lauded or ordained by the food community, she just went ahead and did it. As Leah always says, “The hood needs good food, too.” And what happened was that her good food and her good intentions gave her restaurant a clout she never imagined it would ever have. Everyone who’s ever run for office in Louisiana, or wanted to win a block of votes in Louisiana, knew that in order to get the votes, black votes, you had to go through Leah’s restaurant. And because of that, blacks and whites began to sit at the table together and plan the future
of the city together. Leah Chase created one of the first integrated restaurants in America.

I think about what I’ve been through to open Red Rooster and I know it is child’s play compared to what Leah went through in the days of segregation. Leah gave me a vision of the kind of restaurant I wanted to open. In neighborhoods like Harlem and the Lower Ninth, people are loyal to a great restaurant. It would be my job to make the Rooster great. I knew it wouldn’t happen on our first day, in our first month, even in our first year. But if I kept my heart in the right place and steeped myself in Harlem’s history, then the people would come—and keep coming.

B
Y THE TIME
I’d gone from buying my name to the White House state dinner, it was clear that I was going to be able to open another restaurant. But what exactly would this place be? One day, my business partner Andrew Chapman and I were just sitting and talking. I said, “I really want to build a place in Harlem. All this cooking and all the running around; I just want to change communities through food. What if we could get all the people I’ve been cooking for all these years, like the Charlie Roses, the Barbara Walterses, the business people, and the downtowners together with my Swedish crowd and some Harlem cats—all just eating in the same place?”

Andrew laughed and said, “That would be unreal.” Then he said, “How are we going to make it happen?”

A couple of weeks later, we just went and chatted with Andrew’s dad about it and said we wanted to open a little joint in Harlem. I saw the development on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and thought it should be there. Andrew’s dad pulled out an old map of New York. He asked me to point out the Apollo and 125th. I pointed at 125th and said we should be here, close to the iconic streets and places, and Andrew’s dad agreed.

Andrew and I have been friends for so many years, I can hardly remember us meeting. We connected because both of our mothers
are Swedish, and there’s a certain understanding between us because we have the same values. Although Andrew was raised in New York, he was steeped in the same Swedish culture I was: life, for us, is all about the simple pleasures: spending time with family and friends, eating outdoors at picnics, being physically active. When we decided to partner in the Samuelsson group, bringing Andrew’s West Village restaurant, August, into the fold and opening Red Rooster in the process, we were united in our goal to create hospitality that reflects the values that are important to us.

We looked everywhere in Harlem for the next two months. Over by the West Side Highway, I felt too out of the conversation. It was definitely more affordable if we went all the way east, but a restaurant like this, which I wanted to be the first of its kind in Harlem, couldn’t be off the beaten path. For weeks, Andrew and I texted each other constantly, tearing pages out of magazines, creating with words and pictures a virtual canvas of the place that we wanted to create.