Yes, Chef (41 page)

“Are you that chef?” the guy asked.

I nodded.

He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re the reason my rent went up,” he said. “White people are loving Harlem and now my rent is going up.” Then he said something I would never forget: “You know what James Baldwin used to say? Urban renewal equals Negro removal.”

And yet, later that same day, a young cook named Richard stopped me when I was on my way to buy some flowers for my wife. He said, “I’ve lived on 118th Street all my life. I never imagined there’d be a restaurant like the Rooster up here. Look out for me, chef. I’m coming in to apply for a job.” Just like in the days of Langston Hughes, Harlem is a dizzying mixture of joy and pain: the weary blues, swing, and boogie all rolled into one. We are creating jobs, but I can’t be blind to the fact that we are part of a changing landscape in Harlem.

Not too long ago, President Obama had his first Democratic Party fund-raising dinner in Harlem. It was an intimate dinner for fifty, with seats going at $30K a pop. I knew that part of the reason his team chose the Rooster is because of the multiracial crowds we’ve been attracting. It was exciting: The first time I cooked for him and Mrs. Obama was at the White House. Now they were coming to
my
house. I kept thinking about what I wanted to tell him. “I know it’s been a tough year,” I wanted to say. “Keep pushing.” I wanted to let him know that I stood by him.

When it came time for me to greet him, we hugged—the way my black friends and I say hi on the street. We small-talked, but we small-talked fast. I knew how busy he was and didn’t want to put the slightest crimp in his schedule. I said, “Say hi to the First Lady, the kids, and my friend Sam Kass.” Then we cooked and served. We had exactly
two hours: one hour for hors d’oeuvres and conversation, one hour for dinner. Nothing could go wrong. It was spring, so we started with a tomato melon gazpacho. Then we served our corn bread with the honey butter, followed by a lobster salad with asparagus, peas, and a hot biscuit. For the main course, there was a choice of smoked salmon, seared duck, or braised short ribs. Dessert was peach pudding, with the stone fruit we bought from the peach man, and a buttermilk sorbet. We also served chocolate cake and sweet potato doughnuts. After the meal, I thought about Helga. “This is cooking for fine folk,” my grandmother would have said.

I
N 1939
, when Harlem was still very much in vogue, Billy Strayhorn wrote the song that would become the signature tune of the Duke Ellington orchestra. Ellington had just hired the young composer and had written down directions on how to get to his Harlem home. The first line of directions read “Take the A train.” Strayhorn composed a simple but elegant tune and the rest is history:

I represent so many things to so many different people. In Ethiopia, I am
ferengi
or “white” because I am an American of means. In Sweden, I represent “new Sweden,” which to them means an integrated Sweden. In America, I’m black or African American or an immigrant; it depends. For me, the labels aren’t as important as the journey. I took the train from Göteborg to Switzerland, from Switzerland
to Austria, and back home again. Along the way, I became a chef, a father, a husband, a mentor, and a friend. You can’t take the A train to Addis Ababa but you can take it to Red Rooster, where I’ll happily make you a plate of
doro wat
and serve you the finest selection of Ethiopian coffees and teas.

I don’t live on Sugar Hill in Harlem, that legendary row of mansions that once belonged to Harlem’s elite, men like Adam Clayton Powell Jr., W.E.B. DuBois, and of course Ellington himself. But I walk through Sugar Hill every day on my way to work and it is as sweet a commute as I’ve ever had. It may not be Martin Luther King’s mountaintop yet, but it is as close to it as I have ever seen.

I spent so much of my life on the outside that I began to doubt that I would ever truly be in with any one people, any one place, any one tribe. But Harlem is big enough, diverse enough, scrappy enough, old enough, and new enough to encompass all that I am and all that I hope to be. After all that traveling, I am, at last, home.

Marcus, age five, stops to pick flowers on a family hike through the countryside (1975)
Collection of the author

Marcus and his mother, Anne Marie, enjoy the sun during a lakeside picnic (1974)
Collection of the author

Marcus’s father, Lennart, at his fiftieth birthday party in Göteborg (1982)
Collection of the author

The summer after his adoption, Marcus enjoys the sun in the backyard of the family’s house in Göteborg (1974)
Collection of the author

Three years after their adoption, Kassahun and Fantaye are officially baptized as Marcus and Linda Samuelsson (1976)
Collection of the author

Marcus and his sister Linda, in their Easter Saturday outfits, outside the family’s summer house in Smögen (1974)
Collection of the author

Marcus sits on his mother’s lap, next to his sisters, Anna
(middle)
and Linda (1976)
Collection of the author

The Samuelsson family gathers at
Mormor
Helga’s on Boxing Day for a traditional roast turkey dinner (1974)
Collection of the author

Marcus and Linda on the northwest coast of Sweden, with the Carlsten Fortress in the distance (1976)
Collection of the author

Marcus and Linda decorate buns for the holiday season in
Mormor
Helga’s kitchen (1974)
Collection of the author

Marcus, age twelve, in the portrait his parents had taken to announce his confirmation ceremony (1982)
Collection of the author

Marcus
(second from left)
and his classmates performing in a school-wide ice show (1975)
Collection of the author