Who

The face of Scandinavian cuisine in the city, Samuelsson is the chef and co-owner of the Nordic restaurant Aquavit.

Backstory

Born outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Kassahun Tsegie lost his parents to tuberculosis when he was three. Fortunately—for both young Kassahun and legions of future expense-account diners—a vacationing Swedish couple adopted him and his sister, renamed him Marcus Samuelsson, and raised the two kids back in Sweden. After attending culinary school in Gothenburg, Samuelsson had stints in Michelin-starred restaurants in Switzerland, France (in the kitchen of the Georges Blanc), and Austria before heading stateside to take a job at Aquavit, then a fairly unremarkable Scandanavian restaurant in Midtown where he'd briefly interned. When the restaurant's chef, Jan Sendel, suddenly died in 1995, owner Hakan Swan tapped Samuelsson to fill his shoes. That's when his culinary star exploded: At 24, he earned a three-star review from the Times' Ruth Reichl—making him the youngest three-star chef in the paper's history (a distinction he'd later lose to Paul Liebrandt)—as well as instant billing as the Next Big Thing. While Acquavit remains his flagship, he's expanded his restaurant portfolio—and the broader Marcus Sameulsson brand—considerably since then.

Of note

Samuelsson has had mixed success expanding his restaurant portfolio in recent years. An outpost of Aquavit in Minneapolis closed in 2003 after enduring several years of meager business. He had better luck with Riingo, a Japanese fusion spot in the Alex Hotel on East 45th Street, which opened in 2004. Since then, he's opened and closed AQ Café, a dressed-down version of Aquavit; and was briefly involved with the meatpacking district restaurant Merkato 55, which has since closed.

But restaurants are just one part of Samuelsson's expansive culinary and media presence. Like any celebrity chef, he's amassed the obligatory cookbook oeuvre, publishing The Soul of a New Cuisine in 2006 and, most recently, New American Table, which debuted in October 2009. He's hosted TV shows for Discovery Home Channel and BET. And in 2007 Samuelsson inked a deal with Starbucks to create two new coffee blends and two new pastries for the chain.

Trophy case

Samuelsson won the James Beard award for "Rising Star Chef" in 1999; four years later, the Beard Foundation named him the best chef in New York City. For its part, People proclaimed him the fifth-most eligible bachelor in America in 2000.

Pet cause

Samuelsson is a spokesman for UNICEF.

Personal

In 2008, Samuelsson tied the knot with Maya Haile, a model who is also originally from Ethiopia. They live in West Harlem.