Chef Marcus Samuelsson on immigration, creativity, and Anthony Bourdain

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2018

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marcus Samuelsson is the Michelin-starred chef behind Harlem’s The Red Rooster an award-winning cookbook author,the winner of the first season of Top Chef: Masters, ;nd the host of No Passport Required, a new food and travel show from Eater and PBS. Samuelsson’s story is remarkable. He was born in Ethiopia to a mother who carried him and his sister 75 miles on foot to a hospital when all three of them were suffering from tuberculosis. Samuelsson’s mother died, but he and his sister survived and were adopted by a Swedish family, which is where he grew up. He’s lived and cooked all over the world — Japan, France, Austria, Switzerland — and has a pile of Michelin stars as a testament to his ability to see how the culinary traditions of one place can be informed by another, or introduced to another. This is a conversation about creativity and how diversity powers it. It’s a conversation about what immigration adds to communities, rather than just the role it plays in politics. And it’s a conversation — an emotional one — about what Samuelsson learned from his friend Anthony Bourdain, whose show No Reservations set the template in this space, and whose loss continues to be Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Europe when I came up in the 90s, structurally the glass ceiling for immigrant
0:07.3	refugees to create an own a business to dream big, it wasn't there for me.
0:12.4	It was better for me to go to America.
0:17.2	Hello, welcome to As a Clanchion, the box media, Paggast Network.
0:30.5	My guest today is Marcus Samuysl, the Michelin star chef behind Harlem's Red Rooster and
0:34.6	the host of the new show, No Passport Required, which is a food and travel show from box media
0:39.2	and PBS that roots itself in America's immigrant communities and uses them as a window
0:44.4	into diversifying country.
0:46.2	Samuysl is an amazing guy with an amazing story.
0:49.3	His born in Ethiopia to a mother who carried him and his sister all three of them suffering
0:54.2	from tuberculosis, 75 miles on foot to a hospital.
0:58.8	His mother died, but he and his sister survived and they were adopted by a Swedish family,
1:02.8	which is where he grew up.
1:04.4	Samuysl's life, what he has done and who he's become and what he has created, is this
1:08.7	extraordinary testament to what is possible when countries open themselves to each other.
1:13.0	How much everyone can gain when we give people with a different perspective, the chance
1:17.6	to build on our traditions, to mix them with their traditions, to see our experiences
1:21.5	and create something that couldn't have existed without that fusion.
1:25.5	I've only had this conversation because I've been thinking a lot on the show about diversity
1:30.3	and immigration and demographic change in these sort of high level political ways.
1:35.6	What do they do to societies?
1:36.7	How do people have conflict over them?
	...

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