It’s hard to think of a book better-timed than Marcus Samuelsson’s “The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food,” a luminous journey through the many splendored worlds of black-American cuisine.
Part cookbook, part tasty history lesson, it adds a sweet note to the belated celebration of under-appreciated black artists, writers, filmmakers, inventors and business innovators. The book’s also a mood-lifter for this terrible pandemic year. What’s more heartwarming than 300 pages of food illustrations so luscious-looking, you want to eat them off the pages?
Born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden, Samuelsson personifies the archetypical multicultural, immigrant New Yorker. He’s best known as the award-winning former chef of Aquavit and the pilot of his thriving, game-changing Harlem restaurant Red Rooster.
And he’s a damn good writer. He brings to vivid life a sprawling constellation of black American chefs — some famous, some little known — and their creations. It took Samuelsson, his co-author, photographers, researchers and recipe testers four years to produce — “big lift for my team, like the Olympics,” he told The Post.
“The Rise” reveals the eye-popping scope of black culinary genius, integral to what Samuelsson calls “the beauty of America.”
“You can’t think of American music without black music, and it’s the same with American food,” he told The Post.
Some people still perceive black-American cuisine mainly through the prism of Southern “soul food.” More enlightened eaters know the truth is worlds more complex. Dishes with Guyanese, Jamaican and Senegalese origins pop up on many restaurant menus.
But gastronomical cherry-picking can miss how thoroughly woven “black” food is throughout our culinary fabric. The dishes in “The Rise” originated from around the globe. Their chefs made them American, although not of the steak-and-apple pie school.
“How do people understand black cooking?” Samuelsson mused. “Jamaican cooking is different than Ethiopian cooking or the cooking of the Great Migration” from the American south, he said. In “The Rise,” he sets out to honor all the different styles that became part of the American culinary scene.
“The Rise” illuminates scores of chefs’ careers and creations. Some are as recognizable as New York’s Eric Gestel, Eric Ripert’s Martinique-born executive chef at Le Bernardin, and Southern-born J.J. Johnson of Harlem’s Field Trip. Another is entirely anonymous — an undocumented Mexican immigrant working in a San Diego kitchen.
We also meet Austin, Texas, chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph’s Guyanese-style smoked venison with roti and pine nut chutney; New York home cook Eden Fesehaye’s Eritrean-inspired lamb wat; and Boston food educator Fred Opie’s West African-style broken rice peanut seafood stew.
There’s a warm nod, as well, to Patrick Clark, who before his premature death from heart failure in 1998 made Warner LeRoy’s Tavern on the Green an unlikely culinary magnet for several golden years.
A unifying theme among many of the book’s featured chefs is their enthusiasm to spend time in Africa and learn from the continent’s myriad traditions, styles and raw materials.
“I knew I was onto something last year when five of my friends said they were going to Nigeria to learn. In the past, they’d be going to Paris,” Samuelsson said.
“It’s always been the same with music. Jazz musicians like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie did it all the time. Stevie Wonder went to Nigeria to meet Fela [Kuti].”
Fine, but what about recipes? There are 150 of them, each with a thumbnail history. If you’re mystified by buttermilk-baobab broiled peach popsicles, Savannah, Ga., baker Cheryl Day makes the dessert based on the lemony fruit of East Africa’s iconic baobab tree seem as easy as apple pie.
Samuelsson managed to corral all the chefs while he was busy running restaurants in New York and four other cities, organizing charitable events and producing TV shows.
“As with any minority community, there’s like an underground network” of acquaintances, he said. But he met many at his annual Harlem EatUp! food festival. “All the best African-American chefs came, so I’ve cooked with a majority of the people in the book,” he said.
Samuelsson was blamed by some Harlemites for “gentrifying” their neighborhood when Red Rooster opened. One chef even accused him of “cultural appropriation.”
Samuelsson writes, “Black food matters.” But “The Rise” soars above politically correct slogans.
“America is dealing with two pandemics — the pandemic of racism, which has been around longer than COVID,” he told The Post. But, “we are highly layered and complex, which from a food point of view can only get more and more delicious.”
These are some of the New York City-based chefs and restaurateurs who are featured in “The Rise.”
Alexander Smalls
Founder of the Cecil (210 W. 118th St.) and Minton’s Playhouse (206 W. 118th St). Modern steakhouse and atmospheric jazz club next door.
Eric Gestel
Executive chef, Le Bernardin (155 W. 51st St.). World-famous, three Michelin star French seafood restaurant.
Melba Wilson
Owner, Melba’s (300 W. 114th St.). Southern-style popular favorites in bustling dining room.
J.J. Johnson
Chef/owner, Fieldtrip (109 Malcolm X Blvd.). Counter-service spot for global rice bowl dishes
Tiffany Jones
Pastry chef, Red Rooster (310 Malcolm X. Blvd.). Marcus Samuelsson’s hot spot for African-American and Swedish-influenced “comfort food.”