"Our names are our stories. We sew our experiences together to make a life and our names are both the needle and the thread. 'Marcus Samuelsson' is more than the name of a chef who has done X, Y and Z. It's a name that reflects my life: where I started, each stop along my journey, and the man that I've become."In "Yes Chef" Marcus Samuelsson, an Ethiopian who grows up with a Swedish family, tells the story of how he fell in love with cooking and how his cooking and love for new experiences and flavors inform his life. I love this book. I find it interesting, original and though it began slow it still captured my interest. I was able to read it in four days.Some highlights: I love the author's reflections on race and the food industry. I also love that he is willing to portray himself as flawed. He admits his tendency to have an ego and he admits that he has failed the people in his life on many occasions. However, he also realizes that that is a part of growing up. The story is broken up into three sections. The first is entitled boy, the second is Chef and the third is Man. I love that he did this. A lot of the memoir seemed like a journey to define himself. Titling each section in this way and admitting that it took him a long time to reach the status of Man, the status taught to him by his father, showed the reader that through the process of writing he is coming to a place where he feels comfortable with his self and all the many cultures he identifies with.It is right that the story ends in Harlem at his new restaurant, The Red Rooster. He writes "I spent so much of my life on the outside that I began to doubt that I would ever truly be in with any 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." Aside from reading, I love cooking...and reading about cooking is up there too. This book is very well written. Many reviews say it was ghost written, which is fine with me. The story is all Marcus Samuelsson. His life is interesting and I enjoyed learning about the places he came from and those that he's been to. Unfortunately, I didn't always care for the chef himself. He is driven, to be sure, but also comes across as self absorbed and selfish. It made it hard to have sympathy when things didn't go well. If I could give a half star I'd go with 3 1/2 for beautiful descriptions of places and food and a fairly interesting life story.
What do You think about Yes, Chef (2012)?
Good bio. Enjoyed the food exploration around the world as Samuelsson traveled and learned.
—rsoccer
Intriguing read into the mind of an immigrant/adoptee/world reknown chef
—olakierz
