Chef Marcus Samuelsson on the ingredients for success

Summary

Masters of Scale – Chef Marcus Samuelsson on the Ingredients for Success

Podcast: Masters of Scale
Host: Reid Hoffman
Date: July 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the power of storytelling in business and community-building through the extraordinary journey of Marcus Samuelsson—a multi award-winning chef, restaurateur, and media personality. Samuelsson, who was born in Ethiopia, adopted in Sweden, and ultimately built a culinary empire in New York, shares insights on how amplifying diverse narratives can inspire excellence, fuel innovation, and create lasting impact. The discussion also features Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, reflecting on placemaking and community transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Value of Diverse Stories and Community Narratives

• Storytelling as a Connector

  • Reid Hoffman opens by reflecting on how sharing personal narratives, like that of colleague Jay Punjabi's family and communal meals, can create connection and catalyze change.
    • “Storytelling and connecting with people, it’s kind of a service... you’re a spark and a catalyst for someone else to bring their own experience to life.” – Jay Punjabi (04:28)

• Amplifying Customer and Community Voices

  • Hoffman underscores the need for leaders to create platforms for others’ stories, emphasizing that this fosters trust, loyalty, and impact (05:42, 08:45).

Marcus Samuelsson’s Journey: From Ethiopia to Global Influence

• Early Life Shaped by Change and Resilience

  • Marcus recounts being born in Ethiopia, surviving tuberculosis, losing his mother, and being adopted by a Swedish family.
    • “Left one of the warmest countries in the world to one of the coldest... but I was surrounded with lots of love.” – Marcus (11:52)
    • Cooking became central through his grandmother Helga:
      • “I started to understand the essence of taste just through my grandmother’s meatballs.” (12:33)

• Inspiration from Stories – Finding Himself in Others’ Success

  • Cookbooks by Charlie Trotter and Marco Pierre White opened his perspective to new possibilities for himself as a Black chef (14:01).
    • “If he can do all those things, there’s got to be room for a black chef.” (14:09)

• Facing Barriers and Breaking Through

  • Early in his career in France, Samuelsson is told he cannot be a head chef due to being Black (15:35).
    • “I can’t lower my dream, I can’t lower my ambition.” (16:06)
  • Moving to New York, Samuelsson finds an environment that celebrates diversity and enables him to ascend rapidly in restaurant kitchens.
    • “I love New York right away. I love the noise, I love the smell...” (17:01)

From Fine Dining to Rooted Community Leadership

• Redefining What a Restaurant Can Be

  • Samuelsson’s rapid ascent at Aquavit and earning a three-star NYT review at age 23 (18:52).
  • The experience of 9/11 instigates deep reflection and a shift in priorities (19:54).
    • “Should I go back to Sweden? But I can’t leave because of this. You don’t do that.” (20:46)

• Building Institutions “of Place”

  • Moving to Harlem, Samuelsson immerses in local traditions, food vendors, and community culture (22:02).
    • “I noticed right away everything worked different uptown. The good food was not necessarily in a traditional restaurant…” (22:16)
  • The value of lifelong learning and humility in a new environment (23:16).

Placemaking and the Broader Context: Thelma Golden’s Perspective

• Harlem’s Unique Legacy in Arts and Culture
  • Golden describes the Studio Museum’s history and its mission to reflect, celebrate, and project Black experience through art (25:38).
    • “Harlem deserved an institution devoted to the presentation of visual art by Black people... incredibly radical in its sense of future making.” (25:38)
  • Art and placemaking as vehicles for embracing diverse narratives and catalyzing community change (27:07).

Red Rooster & The Power of Narrative-Driven Business

• Red Rooster as a Hub for Black and Immigrant Food Stories

  • Samuelsson’s restaurant evolves into a space for performances and culturally rich community events, designed to showcase local heritage (28:24).
    • “This programming idea really stemmed out of the bedrock of the creative community, the churches in Harlem, the music...” (28:24)

• Controlling the Narrative and Media Integration

  • To counter misrepresentation and invisibility in the mainstream, Marcus combines hospitality and media (29:29).
    • “We gotta be both a hospitality company and a media company... drive content, drive narrative.” (29:29)
  • He produces cookbooks (e.g., "The Rise"), TV shows highlighting immigrant food ("No Passport Required"), and Harlem food festivals (30:25).

• Constant Innovation

  • “You constantly have to innovate, whether that’s in a restaurant, book, audio or tv. It’s about building something, creating an audience, and you got to make it sticky.” (31:01)

• State Dinner for President Obama: Cross-Cultural Storytelling through Food

  • When challenged to create a menu for a US–India State Dinner, Samuelsson merges traditions:
    • “Let’s break bread... cornbread and chapatis—both Indian and American ties to it.” (31:44)

Crisis, Adaptation, and Deeper Purpose: The Pandemic Years

• COVID-19’s Impact and Chef Community Organizing

  • Losing operations globally in days—“It took 20 years to build and 10 days to break down.” (33:05)
  • Forming the Independent Restaurant Coalition for mutual support and advocacy (33:22).

• Red Rooster Community Kitchen

  • Launching meal service for thousands in Harlem, harnessing the power of dialogue with food-insecure guests (34:21).
    • “The most important work came at the toughest time.” (34:45)
    • Embracing critique and evolving through guest feedback, fostering inclusivity and respect (35:12).

• Furthering Representation: Opening Havmar

  • Determined to put people of color—and especially women of color—in leadership after the pandemic and the reckoning post-George Floyd (35:53).
    • “If I’m going to open up a restaurant, I want to do it with people of color in center and women of color in leadership.” (35:53)

• The Multitude of Black Food Stories

  • “A Jamaican and a Haitian person both love food... but they’re very, very different experiences, and they should be celebrated.” (36:41)
  • Responsibility and leadership as active commitments to build a better future, not passive spectatorship (36:41).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Storytelling and Ego:
  • “As you bring your story to life and you share it, it’s really no longer your own. You’re a spark and a catalyst for someone else to bring their own experience to life.” – Jay Punjabi (04:28)
• On Overcoming Barriers:
  • “I can’t lower my dream, I can’t lower my ambition.” – Marcus Samuelsson (16:06)
• On Finding Belonging in New York:
  • “I had support within the ownership group. They believed in me and they supported me. And I also loved what I was doing. I loved the city. So it was, let’s go.” – Marcus Samuelsson (18:09)
• On Community Kitchen During Pandemic:
  • “The most important work came at the toughest time.” – Marcus Samuelsson (34:45)
• On Diversity in Black Food:
  • “When it comes to Black food, for me it was very important for people to understand that’s not a monolithic conversation.” – Marcus Samuelsson (36:41)
• On Leadership and Activism:
  • “Part about being a leadership position is I cannot sit on the sidelines. For me, it’s like, rather than complain, ask, what can you do about it?” – Marcus Samuelsson (36:41)
• On Placemaking and Art:
  • “The Studio Museum was founded in the cauldron of the civil rights movement and the black power movement... holding to legacy, but it also was incredibly radical in its sense of future making.” – Thelma Golden (25:38)

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Important Timestamps

• 11:03–13:37: Marcus shares his early life after adoption and first inspirations in food
• 15:35–16:47: Facing racial barriers and deciding not to limit his ambition
• 18:09–19:17: Becoming Aquavit’s head chef at 23 and reimagining Scandinavian cuisine
• 19:54–21:07: 9/11’s impact and shifting focus on inclusivity in fine dining
• 22:02–23:16: Moving to Harlem and relearning everything—immersing in community culture
• 25:38–27:07: Thelma Golden explains the Studio Museum’s mission and community role
• 29:29–30:56: Samuelsson on blending hospitality and media to shape narratives
• 34:21–35:47: Launching Red Rooster Community Kitchen and lessons from pandemic adversity
• 35:53–36:41: Opening Havmar—a restaurant with women of color in all leadership positions

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Conclusion

Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s journey illustrates how embracing and amplifying diverse stories—of teams, customers, and communities—yields innovation, resilience, and relevance. His career, from culinary prodigy to community leader, media entrepreneur, and advocate for inclusiveness, is proof that business success and social progress go hand-in-hand. Leaders are reminded that every organization’s narrative should invite, reflect, and empower all voices, laying the groundwork for trust, creativity, and most of all, enduring impact.

Transcript

[Jeff Berman]

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[Reid Hoffman]

But who?

[Jeff Berman]

Well, they're going to blow your minds. It's this October 20th to 22nd in San Francisco. Our theme Our agency now could not be more timely. Applications are open, but spots are limited. [e-mail] apply25 that's mastersofscale.com apply25.

[Jay Punjabi]

One of the dishes that is so dear to me, it's something that I've loved growing up is a dish called Sai Baji, a spinach and lentil Stew that has 10 other vegetables that have been pureed and delicately weaved into the stew so you get this complex amalgam of flavors.

[Reid Hoffman]

That's Jay Punjabi. He's a co founder and head of television at Wait, what? The company that produces Masters of Scale. The dish he's talking about sounds delicious, but for him, there's a deeper meaning to it than simple comfort food.

[Jay Punjabi]

When my father was just eight years old, he was in a refugee camp in Bombay. After the partition of India and Pakistan, he would go out and seek this dish in the home of people in the refugee camp because it became a thing that connected him to the home that he had left and the world that he was familiar with.

[Reid Hoffman]

That was just one of the many personal stories Jay heard for the first time, thanks to an informal experiment he undertook when visiting family in India.

[Jay Punjabi]

I only get a chance to go once a year for about 10 days, and I was searching for a way to connect deeply with them while we're there. So I came up with this adventure. I identified 21 of our favorite home cooked meals growing up. Over the course of seven days, we cooked all 21 of them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My parents, my entire family, my brother, everyone was in the kitchen together. It was complete anarchy and chaos. We started to share stories about our lives. And I started to hear things about my family that I'd never heard before. And it connected me with them in a way in which I could never imagine. And that time ended up becoming sacred.

[Reid Hoffman]

On returning home to New York, Jay couldn't stop thinking about about how sharing those 21 meals with his family had opened a wellspring of unexpected stories. Jay's colleagues at Wait what were also enthralled. So they decided to dedicate an episode of the Wait what? Podcast Meditative Story to Jay's project. The episode, titled 21 Meals, struck a chord with thousands of listeners.

[Jay Punjabi]

The response was unbelievable. Countless people sharing how my experience resembled theirs and how the story opened up a dialogue between them and their family. It was more than just a story. It felt like a movement. When you start to hear from other people about how they're moved, you almost let go of your own ego and you kind of understand that storytelling and connecting with people, it's kind of a service. As you bring your story to life and you share it, it's really no longer your own. You're a spark and a catalyst for someone else to bring their own experience to life. Once you see its impact, you start to realize it's not about you. It's about what you share and what that opens up for someone else and where they go and where they take it, and it continues to ripple out there into the world. We're excited to see where we can take this next.

[Reid Hoffman]

For Jay, uncovering the stories of his family opened an exciting new area of exploration, one that inspired others to delve in their own stories and share them. It's a lesson every leader should bear in mind. Because the best way to invite people into the story of your product is to give them a platform to share their own stories. That's why I believe you need to amplify the unique stories of your community and your customers. Doing so will build a foundation of trust, loyalty, and enduring impact. You gotta have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going home.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

Can you believe it?

[Jay Punjabi]

Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this

[Marcus Samuelsson]

is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways to

[Jay Punjabi]

know what to do.

[Reid Hoffman]

I have no idea what to do.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

Sorry, we made a mistake, but you

[Reid Hoffman]

have to time it right.

[Jeff Berman]

Oops. Working at a three bedroom apartment, Stuff

[Thelma Golden]

that just seems absolutely nutballs ten years later. Well, that's just how you do it.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

We haven't made just how you do it.

[Reid Hoffman]

This is Masters of Scale.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.

[Reid Hoffman]

There's going to be two types of companies. Those who are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

How do we build a future that is human centered? I'm Rana El Kalyubi, and on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur and investor,

[Thelma Golden]

I know what it takes to build

[Marcus Samuelsson]

AI that works for everyone. Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.

[Reid Hoffman]

Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely, from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from the Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find. Just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

[Jeff Berman]

Morning Brew Daily breaks down the biggest

[Marcus Samuelsson]

news in business every morning, so it

[Jeff Berman]

fits seamlessly in your day.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Neal Freyman, and each morning we cover everything from the latest tech

[Jeff Berman]

headlines to why nobody can afford a house right now.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

You'll leave each episode of Morning Brew

[Jeff Berman]

Daily smarter and ready to take on the world around you.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

And some people are saying it's the

[Jeff Berman]

best part of their morning because we know something you don't. Business News Dark it doesn't have to

[Marcus Samuelsson]

be boring Join millions of monthly listeners

[Jeff Berman]

and check out Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

[Reid Hoffman]

I'm Reid Hoffman, co founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and your host, and I believe you need to amplify the unique stories of your community and your customers. Doing so will build a foundation of trust, loyalty, and enduring impact. Picture a vast library with sections for every genre you can imagine. You can find escapism in the romance and sci fi sections, points of reflection in memoir and poetry, and guidance in the self help and business sections. Excited at delving into this wealth of literature and information, you start browsing the shelves. But you quickly realize something's amiss. Each book you pull from The Shelf is written by the same author. What seemed like a monument to the abundance of human knowledge and heart now seems like a garish edifice of self indulgence. Because even if each of these volumes turns out to be well written, the library's most compelling promise of a multitude of voices has been dashed. We rightly value learning from different perspectives. Doing so gives us insights and wisdom we can then incorporate into our own stories. It's something we need to keep in mind if we hope to build enduring and impactful businesses. If we embrace a diverse array of stories and create spaces where every individual's narrative is valued, we can cultivate the deep trust needed to build a business that stands the test of time. Doing this also contributes to building a more inclusive and empathetic society. I wanted to speak with Marcus Samuelsson about this because through his career as a multi award winning chef and media personality, he has emphasized telling and and amplifying the multitude of unique stories that he encounters. Marcus has founded acclaimed restaurants including Red Rooster, Havin Mar and Metropolis. He is also founder of the Marcus Samuelsson Group, which produces media and events celebrating the fusion of food, art, music and culture. Marcus own story begins in Ethiopia, where he was born.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I was born in a hut in Ethiopia in a tiny village called La Bragodena. My sister, my mom and myself, we got tuberculosis. Our mother walked us into the capital, which is a two hour drive, so it's a very long walk. She found a Swedish hospital. She passed away, but my sister and I survived through lots of luck but also some really good people there. We got adopted to Sweden.

[Reid Hoffman]

For Markus, this traumatic experience marked a huge shift in his life's narrative, which even included changing his name.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I went from being Casa Hoonse guy to Marcus Samuelsson. Left one of the warmest countries in the world to one of the coldest countries in the world. I traded chickpea puree for herring and potatoes and meatballs. So it was a lot of changes, but I was surrounded with lots of love. A very secure home with two strong parents, an older sister, grandparents, the Samuelson tribe. We were diverse. We knew that we had each other.

[Reid Hoffman]

One family member in particular, one an influence on Marcus.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

Cooking found me through my grandmother Helga. She was a master of that. I started to understand the essence of taste just through my grandmother's meatballs. We have school lunches and then we had the lunch or dinner I got at home by my parents and then I got the lunch or dinner I got by my grandparents. The school lunch. You were lucky to Find meat in the meatballs, but they were perfectly round, not that tasty. My mom, that was super busy, her meatballs could be one giant patty that we had to cut up ourselves as kids. And then our grandmother's meatballs, they were not perfectly round in shape, but they were lovely. They were delicious. Very early did I understand that things can taste differently based on who makes them.

[Reid Hoffman]

For Marcus, the humble meatball staple of Scandinavian cuisine was an example of how food can be an expression of a multitude of stories. Marcus became passionate about cooking. He found inspiration in the stories of established chefs, whose cookbooks gave him a window into the possibilities not just of cooking, but of himself.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

Charlie Trotter's first cookbook transformed my life. I was blown away that he wasn't French, he was American. And it opened the door to me that America was possible. I remember reading Marco Pierre White's first book, White Heat. The fact that he was young and had long hair and smoked. I thought, okay, if he can do all those things, there's got to be room for a black chef.

[Reid Hoffman]

Inspired by these stories, Marco spent his late teens and early twenties working as an apprentice in restaurants across the world. Japan in particular, left a deep impression.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

When I went to Japan the first time, and I learned about umami, for example, which is something that I didn't know what it was, but to taste it, feel it, to be around it, I felt like, wow, this is a different world.

[Reid Hoffman]

Marcus kept coming across new flavors, dishes, and approaches to creating food. So when he returned to Europe to work in France, he was struck by. By the narrow definition of fine dining that prevailed amongst influential chefs there.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I grew up in a time where all the good food was French. And I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. There's tons of great food here in Japan, tons of great food in Singapore. How come that doesn't get acknowledged? How come I can't buy a cookbook about this? There's another world out there, and you have to discover it.

[Reid Hoffman]

There was another reason Marcus found his return to Europe difficult.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I was speaking to my chef, and he says to me, as a young black chef, you can't ever own a restaurant. No one's going to support it. And he gave me two examples. Do you know anyone that looks like you that have a restaurant in France? I was like, no, I just don't. You know, I don't know a lot of places in France. And then he's like, do you know anyone in Europe? I was like, I haven't been all over Europe, but that Was his point to say, this is not possible. And I said to him, well, I gotta go. I can't lower my dream, I can't lower my ambition.

[Reid Hoffman]

That chef's ludicrously narrow minded view was rooted in his inability to understand stories that differed from his own. For that chef, being white was a non negotiable part of the story of any head chef. This is an extreme example of how being closed off to the diverse stories around you will lead you to overlook talent and opportunity. That head chef's narrow view alienated and drove away Marcus one of the most promising rising talents on his team. Fortunately, Marcus had faith in his own abilities. All he needed was to find a place that celebrated a diversity of stories.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

New York City became the place that made sense for me. I just felt like it was my time to start my own thing.

[Reid Hoffman]

In 1994, Marcus applied for a position at a high end Scandinavian restaurant in Manhattan named Aquavit.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

First of all, I love New York right away. I love the noise, I love the smell, I love the you from the subway. Get out of my way. I have somewhere to stay, which was a massage bed with my four roommates. And I was like, I had $300. Within a week, I got a job.

[Reid Hoffman]

Despite all the distractions of New York, Marcus kept laser focused on his work.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

Once you love where you are and your medium, which I've always loved my medium, it's like a calling. You don't think about how many hours you work, you don't think about how much you give to it. So I could really give myself to food in this opportunity fully.

[Reid Hoffman]

However, shortly after Marcus joined the team at Aquavit, the head chef, Jan Sandel, passed away. Marcus's work ethic and talent had already been noticed by the restaurant owners, so they offered him the role of head chef. He was just 23 years old.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I had support within the ownership group. They believed in me and they supported me. And I also loved what I was doing. I loved the city. So it was, let's go.

[Reid Hoffman]

Marcus began by radically rethinking how to tell the story of Scandinavian cuisine to his customers.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

Well, I thought there was a mystique around Scandinavian food at the time that no one had kind of figured out. And I really had the building blocks of new modern Scandinavian food. We have big woods and outdoors, seafood. We have great clean water and pickling and preserving, you know, so once I had these blocks down, I felt I could build from anything.

[Reid Hoffman]

Marcus didn't want to simply tell the story of Scandinavian food. He wanted to infuse his menu with elements of the stories he'd encountered during his international experience. And in New York, it paid off. Less than a year after taking over Aquavit, Marcus scored a coveted three star review from the New York Times. At 23, he was the youngest chef to have received the accolade.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

So the three stars were great. But one of the best things about being 23 is that in my case, at least, I had no clue what it meant. I just knew that we went from kind of busy on the weekends, not so busy on Monday, Tuesday, to busy all the time. So now it's just about working hard and having a mission.

[Reid Hoffman]

For the next six years, Marcus grew Aquavit's reputation as one of New York's most exciting dining destinations. But then, on September 11, 2001, everything changed for the city Marcus now called home.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

It's still, to this day, very challenging even to speak about, because, you know, I. I cooked at the World Trade center the weekend before it happened. And so I knew a lot of the cooks and servers that passed away that morning. It was very difficult. I didn't know what to do. Should I go back to Sweden?

[Reid Hoffman]

We'll hear what Marcus decided after the break. We're back with Marcus Samuelsson. To see exclusive clips from my interview with Marcus, head to the masters of Scale YouTube channel. Before the break, we heard how Marcus reached a turning point after the September 11 attacks on New York.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

Like, it was very difficult. I didn't know what to do. Should I go back to Sweden? But I can't leave because of this. Because I just felt like it's not. You don't. You don't do that. You're like, you can't. No, I just couldn't do that.

[Reid Hoffman]

Marcus knew he was going to stay in New York, but he also knew he needed to change things up. A conversation with his mom gave him focus.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

So my mom said, you need a change. Why are your experiences always high and expensive? Do something in your neighborhood that is more affordable.

[Reid Hoffman]

Aquavit was embracing a diversity of stories to inspire the food it served. But Marcus realized that this diversity was not reflected in the restaurant's customers. This meant there were huge numbers of people who wouldn't even consider stepping through the doors of Aquavit. Marcus came to realize that he wanted to focus on building institutions that reflected the communities around them. Institutions that celebrated and elevated a wide range of stories and lived experiences. So he took the decision to move to a different part of the city, somewhere that would put him in the midst of A thriving hum of vibrant stories.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I moved from midtown to Harlem and those 50 blocks was like moving to a different country. And I think my love affair for Harlem really starts there.

[Reid Hoffman]

The move opened Marcus up to thousands of new stories.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I noticed right away that everything worked different uptown. The good food was not necessarily in a traditional restaurant, but it could be oyster mite that pulled up right by the subway station, or it could be a church lady that handed out cornbread or the Jamaican jerk guy that had to figure out in which park he was in. And it was not a line, but people were in the known because there's a line once I got there. So I was clearly just new in the neighborhood. So it was this kind of more scratchy, but delicious, very community driven. And that journey and thirst I had to learn about what's going on here.

[Reid Hoffman]

Harlem was an invigorating new environment for Marcus, where individual stories fed into a communal narrative that stretched across generations and continents.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I walked in a neighborhood that kind of wrote the story for me if I was just quiet and just observed enough. Just as much as I learned brand new things when I came to Asia or when I came to France. And it wasn't something exciting to be at that point. Been working for 10, 12 years at a very high level. But then I have to, like, none of that stuff matters. Throw that out. You know, I. I just. I was a student again, which I really loved.

[Reid Hoffman]

This is one of the most important reasons to make yourself a platform for sharing stories. It primes you to constantly learn new things and take on new perspectives. Someone who is at the nexus of the complex narratives that flow through Harlem is Thelma Golden. She's the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, an institution that plays a pivotal role in the cultural and artistic life of Harlem and the broader art world. She's also been a friend to Marcus since his days at Aquavit. Thelma recalls how Marcus passion for Harlem played a part in her decision to join the studio Museum in 2000 as deputy director for exhibitions.

[Thelma Golden]

I did not live in Harlem, but my father was born in Harlem in 1926, and he held a love for Harlem in the deepest, most profound way. And Marcus was the exact, very same way. He was spending so much time thinking and looking and experiencing Harlem. And that opened up ideas about Harlem for me that, while I knew were in me, quite literally right, embedded in my DNA, had not activated when I applied and was offered the job at the Studio Museum. Marcus is one of the first people I spoke to about, was this the right moment. And he was enthusiastic in his sense of what this possibility could mean. I, of course, understood it from my curatorial perspective, my art career perspective, just thinking about what the social scientists call place.

[Reid Hoffman]

Placemaking is a collaborative process of creating vibrant, inclusive environments that foster stronger community ties and enhance the overall quality of life. The studio museum has been at the heart of placemaking in Harlem since its founding in 1968.

[Thelma Golden]

The Studio Museum was founded in the cauldron of the civil rights movement and the black power movement. And at that time, there was a sort of clarion call for the ways in which arts and culture played into an understanding of the liberation of black people. And so the founders of the studio museum were an incredibly diverse group that came together, all with the distinct idea that Harlem deserved an institution devoted to the presentation of visual art by black people. But they also wanted, in creating a museum at that point in the late 60s, to project into a future. So it was a very bold task. It was one that was, on the one hand, holding to legacy, but it also was incredibly radical in its sense of future making. Exhibitions such as the museum's Harlem renaissance exhibition defined an art history. And of course, all through that moment, the museum mounted exhibitions of African American artists of significance. Artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth catlett, Betye Saar, Alma Thomas, and so, so many more.

[Reid Hoffman]

Sharing such a diverse range of stories is at the heart of placemaking and helps build and sustain momentum for positive change.

[Thelma Golden]

I think that art spaces can be catalysts for change through the ability to find a space to kind of understand the diversity of perspectives and ideas. Through the engagement with art, we are constantly being offered an opportunity to understand the complexity of the world in our own lives through the stories and the narratives. Presenting a broad range of diverse art allows for a community to see itself reflected.

[Reid Hoffman]

Following his move to Harlem, Marcus established a new restaurant serving food with a Japanese influence named Ringo, and then another focused on cuisine from across Africa named Mercado 55. He also published a number of cookbooks and hosted a show on the discovery channel. However, Marcus found himself getting more and more immersed in the diverse food stories and cultures of Harlem. So in 2010, he opened a new restaurant, Red rooster. Through it, Marcus wanted to celebrate the neighborhood's rich heritage through not only food, but by programming inclusive events and entertainment.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

This programming idea really stemmed out of the bedrock of the creative community, the churches in Harlem, the music, whether it was gospel, also jazz. Why don't we go from gospel brunch? On Sunday to jazz night on Sunday. On the weekends, it's this kind of block party environment and everybody cooks and helps out.

[Reid Hoffman]

Marcus was excited about the possibilities of combining all these unique stories. But he foresaw a challenge.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

One of the things as a black person, very often our arts get miscommunicated or misunderstood because there's not a lot of people of color that are in the writing or in the editor process. If we were to talk about something that comes food out of the migration and then even more twist of Africa on that, hey, there's not a lot of journalists left at that point, that 2008, 2009 that would actually understand.

[Reid Hoffman]

So Marcus came up with a bold way to overcome this.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

I said we gotta be both a hospitality company and a media company. And we have to drive the media, drive content, drive narrative. We can do cookbooks, we can do blogs. You have to be in media and you have to have something to say.

[Reid Hoffman]

Marcus knew that he had to take charge of the narrative around Red Rooster in order to amplify the stories of the community. In doing so, Red Rooster and his media group would become conduits for sharing a multitude of stories. Marcus created cookbooks such as the Rise Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food. He showcased the rich stories of immigrant food in his TV show no Passport Required. And he leaned into the unique perspectives that surrounded him in Harlem with a Harlem meetup food festival. Here's Marcus describing how that festival incorporates and celebrates many different stories.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

There's about 15,000 people come to Harlem to spend money at local restaurants. It also is a TV show that runs on ABC has a charitable component to it. So a nine year old can take part of kids cooking classes. The parents can participate in the dinner area. The sponsors can obviously take part in the dinner series, but also in the TV show in terms of advertisement. Right. So you create content that is just doesn't operate on one level.

[Reid Hoffman]

For Marcus, there's one constant when it comes to sharing these stories.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

What I've learned in the media game is you constantly have to innovate, whether that's in a restaurant book, audio or tv. It's about building something, creating an audience and you got to make it sticky, otherwise that audience doesn't come back.

[Reid Hoffman]

The way to make it sticky is by telling compelling, surprising new stories that can be as grand as a multi part TV series or as simple as finding new twists on established meals. Something Marcus was challenged with when President Barack Obama asked him to create a state dinner at the White House for a visit by the Indian Prime Minister.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

While cooking for President Obama was a huge, huge honor. Four courses in 44 minutes, 400 people. I started to look at state dinners, and they were all French. And I'm like, that makes sense if there's a French delegation coming, but if it's Indian, we really got to show the best of America and the best of India. And, like, really, how do we present this? I thought about all these politicians, about delegates from India. They probably don't know each other. I was like, let's break bread, you know, and it was bread baskets was big with cornbread and chapatis and, you know, like, both Indian and American ties to it.

[Reid Hoffman]

With that meal, Marcus helped tell a story with a fresh perspective, merging the experiences and cultures of different parts of America and India. Following that dinner, Marcus continued to scale the reach of his media company and his restaurants, opening locations across the world that became pillars in his mission to elevate diverse narratives. But when the COVID 19 pandemic hit in 2020, he immediately began hearing harrowing stories from across the planet.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

We had restaurants in Canada and Montreal, in Bahamas, Sweden, in London. Every call that we got was worse than the other, and we didn't know what to do. So it was scary.

[Thelma Golden]

Wow.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

It took 20 years to build and 10 days to break down.

[Reid Hoffman]

Marcus didn't speak just to his own restaurants. He got on calls with other chefs. The calls quickly became about more than mutual commiseration.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

The chef community is very strong. Calls from Danna Meyer, Tom Colicchio, Jose Andres. So eventually we started Independent Restaurant Coalition. That was a place where we can jump on calls and talk. And how did you solve that? And this is what's happening in California. This is what's happening upstate. It was, you know, became a thing with hundreds of people on the call.

[Reid Hoffman]

Out of the sharing of so many different stories came hope. So when the pandemic began to tail off, talk turned to recovery. For Marcus and his fellow chefs, that meant helping people who were having trouble getting food.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

And then Jose said, we know how to serve safe food. We have masks. We have gloves. You got to gather people. We're going to put this together. I can do that.

[Reid Hoffman]

This was the beginning of the Red Rooster Community Kitchen, an initiative to help feed people struggling with the isolation and lost income thrust upon them by the pandemic.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

He's like, marcus, do you think if we serve food, do you think people will come? I said, absolutely. We served 200 people the first day, 300 people the next day, 800 people, and eventually 1,000, 500 people. And after a couple of weeks in, I realized after all the success we had with Red Rooster, the most important work came at the toughest time.

[Reid Hoffman]

The community kitchen reflected the ethos of the Red Rooster as a community space that celebrates the rich cultural heritage of Harlem and where everyone feels empowered to share their own stories.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

We have new guests, and they could be food insecure, but they were guests and they had opinions just as much as Harlemite through downtown.

[Reid Hoffman]

Marcus listened to those stories from his guests with an open mind.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

They're like, hey, we love the chicken better yesterday. Okay, how come we don't get dessert today? Or like, with all these type of questions, there was just like a dialogue. In the beginning, it was just local to home insecure and food insecure people. And, you know, the word got out. People came in buses, and then towards the end, people came in the cars. Now, with my neighbors, it was not just people who came from shelters and so on. It did transform us, transform myself.

[Reid Hoffman]

The pandemic also gave Marcus time to think about a new project.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

The country was really going through a lot of different things. We went through the tragic George Floyd incident as well. So that semi pause as a creative, which you never really get what you're supposed to get, was massive. I'm like, if I ever get a chance to do this again, I know that the things that are not working in our industry, like, okay, if I'm going to open up a restaurant, I want to do it with people of color in center and women of color in leadership. And we created our new restaurant, Havmar. It is the restaurant where all leadership position held by women of color.

[Reid Hoffman]

At the core of Havan Mar is that continual drive to highlight diverse stories that fuels all of Marcus's work.

[Marcus Samuelsson]

When it comes to black food, for me, it was very important for people to understand that it's not a monolithic conversation. A Jamaican and a Haitian person both love food, but one does griot and great black rice, and one does jerk chicken. And they're both black food, but they're very, very different experiences, and they should be celebrated. Part about being a leadership position is I cannot sit on the sidelines. For me, it's like, rather than complain, ask, what can you do about it? And create and shape a better future.

[Reid Hoffman]

As a leader, your role as a storyteller transcends the boundaries of your personal journey. By giving voice to the varied experiences of your team, your customers, and the broader community, you can help weave a narrative that's rich in diversity and depth. This not only builds a resilient and lasting organization, but also cultivates an environment where every story is valued. I'm reid hoffman. Thanks for listening. Masters of scale is a wait, what? Original our executive producer is chris mcleod. Our producers are chris gaultier, adam skus, alex morris, tucker lagerski, and masha makotrinina. Our editor at large is bob safien. Our music director is ryan holiday. Original music and sound design by eduardo rivera, ryan holiday, hayes holliday and nate kinsella audio editing by keith j. Nelson, stephen davies, stephen wells, and andrew nault. Mixing and mastering by aaron bastinelli and brian pugh. Our CEO and chairman of the board is jeff berman. Masters of scale was created by june cohen and darren triff. Special thanks to jodine d', orsay, alfonso bravo, tim cronin, erica flynn, sarah tarter, katie blazing, mariel kareker, jeanime ezequena, colin howarth, brandon klein, sami oputa, kelsey ceson, louisa velez, nikki williams, and justin winslow. Visit masterscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our email newsletter. There.