"Summer Series: From The Beach With Marcus Samuelsson”

bringing you our Summer Series from the Beach. East Friday, will be publishing short and intimate conversations that I've had with some of the top talent in the food world. And even beyond. The conversations you'll here for the next six weeks were recorded pool side at the w Hotel and South Beach as my friends and I enjoyed great cigars and magnums of rose as we discussed our past,

present and future. And without further delay, please enjoy Summer Series from the Beach with fashion icon and world renowned chef Marcus Samuelson. Everybody expounds at work, and when you hear a lot of people on Instagram like it's about just hard work, it's not just hard work. Hard work gets you X y Z, but it can burn you out and then you can become just someone who just works very hard, without ambition, without sort of a systematic sense of like what it is to perform. So I

think that you have really outperformed others. And the discussion today is about how do you do that? How do you stay like young, excited, okay, young ish, excited, forward looking, aggressively expand, but make sure that you can deliver Marcus Samuel so into every restaurant you open. So at fifty, you're now opening more restaurants than you've ever done, which is usually when people slow down, you're just getting started.

I mean, I love the game like I loved it, right, and I think about high performance for a long time. I think it's also how you take care of yourself. Right, So for me, why I do it? How I do it? You know the why? It's very important. Why do we open over town? Right? I just hate this idea that great food should be in one zip code and only certain people should have access to it. That's bullshit. That's

not what America is. Americans like, let's have fantastic food in every neighborhood and let's so that's what we open over town and create job opportunities. And for me, I get excited about that. I make sure I work out in the morning. I'm your very no, it's it clears your mind. It's not about, it's just about. And then I'm off and then I'm excited to be like, Okay, I can do this right. And if you go to places like New York or Miami del A, no one

needs another restaurant. It's really if you want to add value to the city that you love, I open a restaurant because I love. It's like my love letter to the city. You know what I mean. And if you if that doesn't drive you, that doesn't get excited for work with the cooks, to architect you know all of that stuff, right? What what? What else is there? I mean? For me, this is so exciting. Even when it doesn't work out, I still learn something. So you're were in Bermuda?

How is Bermuda one of my favorite islands? Bermuda is amazing. We've been very We've been very fortunate. We are really lacking of good food and it's coming. It's hard. We have our markets restaurant in Montreal at the fourth season, I was doing really really well, and now we'll be over town this year. So every every year probably wanted two. We add wanted too. Is that the goal? Yeah, well

that's where we go. There's no goal. You just do it. Yeah, if the city speaks to me and I'm excited, and you know, in in Montreal, it was really about that French connection and and creating seafood that I grew up with, but in a more dynamic way. And you know, you work with the fourth season in a magical city. Why wouldn't you do that? You know exactly, So you do your show No Passport required PPS. Fantastic show and one of the ones that I most appreciated what you were.

You were in Los Angeles when you Armenians, Armenia. If you're in Glendale, dropped the names a carrion, it will get your ship for free, just just Glendale our name dropping. Ever. I know, I know, Jeff Frown, They're really they're good people, right, and it's a whole thing. It's like it's Persian, Lebanese, Armenian. This country. People don't understand, like Glendale is like in the Middle East, a big you know from Turkey, Lebanon, Persia such a big footprint. It's amazing, really good. What

did you learn from doing that show? I mean that show was made for you first of all, yea made for you? No, absolutely. I learned that America's beauty is really in this diversity and people are all we all of us have amazing stories and through food we can share it. Right. If we're gonna share it through politics, religion, it gets hard. But if you want to share a story through food, anyone opens the doors up. And as a chef, just to take a step back and actually

listen to that not cooking, yeah, amazing. If you are like that. Everybody loves food, I don't care what I mean. You can sit around the table with you know, every party there is in the world, and that you can all disagree. You start eating, you're like, wow, it's delicious. So one thing we actually creep on. It's kind of funny. Out of look your kids, who is the one that's moon drawn to my kids to cooking or what daddy does?

I think they all are. I would say my daughter Madeline is sort of the most aggressively into the like she's following dad a little bit. And I would say Anna, my mid daughter on my mid she's ten. She probably has the best taste buds of anyone. She'll said, Dad, did did you put like ginger in this maple syrup? Where while she's on iPhone like Instagram that ginger in this? Like like what about Georgie? George just loves to eat, eating with everything. You know, they just love to have that.

How is it being apparent? Oh? I love it. Zion is Zion. He's three and a half going on twelve or something. That right, World traveler, Yeah, World travelers coming Landing asked we speaking actually, but he's just you know what, it's just changes everything and you just get every day there's something else. So I Chris Chris Bosh is on here and he has five kids, and I said one or some one word or phrase that you're trying to pass on to your children. This is your first child, right,

so what is that one thing you wake up? I wanted to make sure that Zion is humility, humble and understands. He said, responsibility. I said, modesty, ulity. Yeah. One of the things that I really loved about growing up in Sweden was that my grandparents talked a lot about poverty, but not in a bad way, but actually the work

ethic around that, right. And you know when you and I talked a lot about your father, us being a pianist and all that, it takes work, takes skill, and that is why you're here today, right, It's all they you know, they worked. We didn't have the idea of performance back then, because performance was like you didn't eat. This is different, you know for you and I and the people that were talking about performances, like you're on

your highest level. You're an outlier almost, you're practicing ten thousand hours in your life to do this one thing. That's what we're talking about. They at least my parents and your parents probably too. It was survival. It was day to day. It was like, okay, we're okay, this will be for tomorrow. We'll save a little for tomorrow. We have some for the next day. When my father went from he grew up in a fishing village and when he said no to take over the fishing business

to go to school. He was the first one to go to university and become a geologist. Everyone in the village were upset, like what are you doing? What are you doing? So when I became a chef. He was always go for it right and go hard and do your best. And I think that the humility, I think it's the one thing that I really we work on that. But we also so blessed. I mean, you talked about opening restaurant, and we talked about working art. It's a privilege.

We have been fun. We're getting a chance to express ourselves as creative. We're working with young guns. It is amazing, Like even a hard day is a good day. It's a hard day. And as far as performance goes, I mean a lot of people don't understand that we have really no hours. I mean this is basically a seven

occupation that you know. I asked everybody here what's the first thing they do, and they all said, while I go to the gym or I work out, but really the first thing to do is check their email at five o'clock in the morning and answer business cross. That's what they do. And let's be honest, we're very lucky to do what we do. But we're also a little you know, there's a little we want to take care

of people. So how does that affect you? So performance and taking care of people, taking care of yourself, what is that for you? Because I know all you think about is like doing the right thing by your staff. You talk about yourself tribe, that tribe we have right. First of all, you know we wouldn't be able to do anything without our families. And you have an amazing white market is always on your side. You're like, really an amazing one two punch, right, you really are right.

But it starts with that tribe because if it doesn't work at home, it doesn't work. Then the second tribe is really I think the staff and what can we collectively create, and then the audience, right, the customer. Without the customer, we're not here. Profit is probably number ten on that man, it's not the first thing you think about. I think about all of these other things. How you want to express yourself, doing the right thing, and humility.

And we also get we're very weird that as a as a operator, because if we have a good cook or a good chef, we already know who we're gonna send her to or send him to him. If you have a law firms, like I got a young up and coming lawyer, you're keeping that lawyer. We share in everything. Sometimes maybe the default, but that's also why we are chefs or so unique. You know what I mean, there's something abnormal about what we do. There is I feel abnormal,

credit of course, but it's also the abnormal. It is also our beauty, all of us here, take all the ship away, we would still cook, whether somebody would pay us or not. Absolutely, Absolutely your routine. What is your routine? Your physical nutrient based? And I know you're a soccer player. I'm up early, love soccer. I love soccer, but early, and then the first two hours before my son goes to school, make breakfast, we talk, we have our moment,

then he gets ready to go to school. Then my first work hours is really taking care of europe swedom. By nine thirty, that's done with in the morning, yes, and I've been up to six so and then I want to go and work out and then I'll go to work and then the day starts. Right. What do you eat? I eat pretty liked actually, because I don't like to be heavy, because once we come to work, it's all about tasting by and I try not to eat lunch because at that point I want two o'clock.

I've had meetings. People cook stuff, we taste, we argue about it. We go back and forth. So I probably had a lunch by everybody is fifty calories, so you have ten bites or seven fifty calories full lunch. Absolutely. Do you take a nap? Not anymore. I used to take naps. Oh that's great and really good. It sounds like old fashioned. I'm telling you, forty minutes just down, even if you're not completely Yeah, think about in Spain right this yes to us and all the stuff. So, yeah,

that's awesome. Because they have four bottles of wine, bring that back, you would bring back. So what else is on the horizon for you that you feel so excited about that no one here really would know about. I'm very excited about over Town because it's it's due. I'm excited about that. And I also feel like our industry as the whole, we're heading in the right direction. It was murking for a minute. It was hard. You know, everything changed, salaries, all of that stuff. We're getting better

were diversity, we're getting better with inclusion. Our food is getting better. Small cities, asked you and I when we travel around the country, just quick, everywhere in America, everywhere. Everywhere used to be the big city. It's not any more. It's everywhere, everywhere. It's really incredible. What's food city do you? Are you excited about that? People might not know, well, I know what's coming up as Tampa. Yeah, Tampa is a sleepy town three million people next to St. Pete.

And you know, everybody is looking at it because it is such such such incredible people there, and the food is now just on the edge of being great. It's not just burns used to be not anymore. Uh, Washington d C. Washington d C is amazing, amazing five years. It's been five years only, so it's like just gone on fire. So what I love about the idea of like these cities are that it takes only five years now. Used to take a generation, a couple of decades, Now

it takes five years. You're in what happens chefs like you myself, great chefs that come to New York their work and they go back to their town and now they're okay with opening in their small town. It's not like, oh my god, I want to go to New York and live there. It's like I'm going back and they have an audience, you know, So chefs are returning, they returning back. Look at Gavin Cason, what he's done. You talk about performance that I took from. He took Danielle

back to Minnesota and has three ways class restaurants. He's training a whole tribe to say, if you live in the Midwestern your young cook, it was it was a desert. It's a food desert. Unbelievable. And the way even when Gavin even latter his story. When Gavin left Danielle two years before he was leaving, he came to a bunch of us, how do I do it? I said, you include chef six months ago. Okay, I'm gonna go and speak to Chef Danielle now about leaving. He talks to Danielle.

Danielle invests in his restaurants. Morrow. I mean, that's just the book of how to exit where both are winning. I mean, Gavin is textbook like unbelievable class. No, it's when Daniel's class of course. I mean, of course, would you talk about sharing with this industry. What people I think are like learning is we are do something very different than most people. I mean we raise money like Crazy City Harvest Food Bank and all these organizations that

we there's too many to even this morning. What did you said do right? He gathered a bunch chef's talk about out World Center kitchen and how to improve. It wasn't about how can I be learning out the restaurants, like how can I help out exactly? And the egos. We can put our egos aside. We have them and we need them, but we put them aside really rapidly because at the end of the day, we're just feeding people.