Marcus Samuelsson is an award-winning chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, philanthropist and food activist. His most recent restaurant is New York City’s acclaimed Red Rooster Harlem, which opened in December 2010. The restaurant celebrates the roots of American cuisine in one of New York City’s liveliest and most culturally rich neighborhoods. Chef Samuelsson has been featured on Iron Chef, Chopped All-Stars, Top Chef Masters, 24 Hour Restaurant Battle, The Martha Stewart Show, the Today show, and his own television show, The Inner Chef, on Discovery Network.Marcus was recently honored as a guest chef at the White House under the Obama administration, where he planned and executed the administration’s first state dinner for the first family, Prime Minister Singh of India and 400 guests. While he has been honored by the prestigious James Beard Foundation on multiple occasions, including “Rising Star Chef” (1999), “Best Chef: New York City” (2003) and “Best International Cookbook” (2007), Marcus continues to maintain humility with regard to the art of food and his UNICEF endeavors, working toward immunization and curbing malnutrition for children throughout the world.His books include Aquavit: And the New Scandinavian Cuisine (2003), Discovery Of A Continent: Foods, Flavors, And Inspirations From Africa (2007), New American Table (2009), Yes, Chef: A Memoir (2013), Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home (2014), Make It Messy: My Perfectly Imperfect Life (2015) and The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem (2016).
“Everyone has a story and a recipe,” says Edward Lee.Lee’s begins in his Korean grandmother’s windowless kitchen in Brooklyn, where he grew up on rice bowls and kimchi. But his palate longed for adventure: he’d sneak over to newsstands and “peek into issues of Gourmet like they were Playboy, lusting after lamb roasts and tartes Tatin,” he confesses in his cookbook, Smoke & Pickles (2013). “I’d whisper the recipes aloud.” For Lee, that allure and magic would never dim. By his thirteenth birthday, he writes, “I knew I would spend the rest of my life chasing the seduction of food.” These days, he’s living an entirely different chapter, in Louisville, Kentucky—and his story has become one of smoke and pickles. “Some say umami is the fifth flavor,” he says. “I say smoke is the sixth.” From the Korean BBQ of his childhood to the rampant BBQ culture of the South, “smoke is the intersection that connects my two worlds.” Whether that smoke comes from bourbon, bacon, or smoked spices, it pairs brilliantly with the briny punch of pickles, Korean as well as Southern. Best known for his appearances on Top Chef and Mind of a Chef, as well as his James Beard Award nominations, Lee now serves up eclectic, elegant dishes at his three restaurants, all of which draw upon the kaleidoscopic facets of his unique story. “What I cook is who I am,” Lee writes, and that’s certainly true of the Panna recipes he’s shared with us: they take us back to his Korean-Brooklyn childhood, the years he sweated his way up through the kitchens of New York, and into the future of Southern fine dining.Edward's Restaurants:610 Magnolia (Louisville, KY) MilkWood (Louisville, KY) Succotash (National Harbor, MD)Edward's Book:Smoke & Pickles (2013)