SNEAKER PEEK: Samuelsson’s apartment has colorful flourishes including a closet where he stores his shoes. (Michael Sofronski)
HARLEM HOTTIES: Samuelsson and his wife, Gate Haile, have room to spread out and numerous quirky pieces in their 2,200-square-foot condo. Samuelsson, who decorated the apartment himself, creates recipes — and art — in his home. (Michael Sofronski)
Samuelsson’s apartment. (Michael Sofronski)
Samuelsson and his wife, Gate Haile. (Mark von Holden)
There are numerous reasons why chef Marcus Samuelsson, owner of Harlem hot spot Red Rooster, loves his apartment. For one thing, it’s smack in the heart of Harlem, where he’s wanted to live ever since he was a boy growing up in Sweden. For another, it boasts a copper Blue Star stove, which he calls the “best of the best.” And for still another, he has plenty of room to create recipes.
But the main reason he loves his home is because it’s where he first met his wife, Gate Haile (he calls her Maya).
It was 2005; Samuelsson was one of the first buyers in the new condo building. His choice: a duplex with 1,100 square feet on each floor, 14-foot ceilings and an 800-square-foot patio. He paid, he says, around $1 million. He gave the apartment two important additions. The first was the Blue Star stove.
“It’s really for chefs,” he says. “It has the highest BTUs of any stove. I test recipes in my kitchen. The idea of a dish starts here, and then I execute it at the restaurant.”
The other addition was another stove — on the patio.
“It’s a whole kitchen out there,” Samuelsson says. “It’s a grill, a stovetop and a salamander [another grill with very high heat].”
Both those kitchens and all that 2,200 square feet of space were originally for just Samuelsson himself. At that point, he hadn’t even met Haile. He filled the apartment with antiques and quirky pieces he’d accumulated over the years.
“Not long after I moved in and finished the apartment, I decided to have a housewarming party,” he says. “That was when I met Maya. Someone brought her. She’s a model, about 6 feet tall and stunning. But the main thing that attracted me is that she’s a very sweet girl.”
One thing led to another, and the couple (who were both born in Ethiopia and returned there for their 2009 wedding) soon moved in together.
“I brought all the furniture myself,” Samuelsson says. “All that was left for Maya to bring in was televisions and computers. And if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t even have a television set.”
TVs aside, there’s no question that the apartment fulfilled many of Samuelsson’s longtime dreams.
“I think this building has one foot in the past and one foot in the future,” he says. “It looks old from the outside, but it’s very modern on the inside.
“I always wanted loft space. I work very thematically. Before I create a recipe, I write down the concept of what I’m making. Then I paint those ideas — I make a collage.”
He points to a painting he did of some 1940s musicians.
“Those people didn’t have much money, they ate fried chicken feet and had a good time,” he says.
That’s what inspired his recipe for Red Rooster’s fried chicken.
“So I write it, I paint it, and then I cook it,” he says. “That’s why I need space to grow my ideas.”
Even the home’s hardwood floors are meaningful to Samuelsson.
“I always wanted to have rich wood floors,” he says. “And furniture was always important to me. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was orphaned when I was 3, and my sister and I were adopted by a Swedish family. At home in Sweden, we didn’t have fancy stuff, but we had great furniture. So I always wanted an open space with different pieces.”
He has an armoire from the 1960s and a prayer chair that he got in Singapore. There’s a rack for champagne bottles that looks like a ladder with holes in it instead of slats and an antique wing chair that’s big enough for two.
There’s a jaunty mannequin standing on top of a table loaded down with books and magazine.
“My wife’s a model, so I think its fun to have that mannequin,” Samuelsson says.
Then there are his dining-room chairs. They’re old Scandinavian chairs that he patiently, laboriously wrapped in newspaper clippings and then covered in clear plastic.
“I read a lot,” Samuelsson says. “Some of the clips are about the Iraq war. I want us to remember that.”
Samuelsson also has an eye-catching closet with different colored doors — red, green, blue, yellow and orange — where he keeps his sneaker collection. He has about 60 pairs.
“My sneakers get used,” he says. “When I’m done with them, I take them back to Africa and give them to my brothers and sisters.”
It turns out he wasn’t actually orphaned when he was 3. His mother died, and he grew up thinking his birth father had died, too. But when Samuelsson was an adult, he found out that his father is alive, living in Ethiopia with eight more children.
“I take care of all of them,” Samulesson says, “It’s a lot of responsibility.”
He’s not one to dodge responsibilities. Samuelsson, 41, has already had an extremely distinguished career. He was the acclaimed executive chef of Aquavit. He’s written books including “The Soul of a New Cuisine” and “New American Table.” He cooked the Obama administration’s first state dinner, then followed that up with a recent Obama fundraiser at Red Rooster. He won “Top Chef Masters,” plus he had his own show, “The Inner Chef.” He’s the co-founder of the new foodrepublic.com, a food/lifestyle site for men. And he’s being honored by the New York Urban League for his efforts to promote equal opportunity and civil rights.
But more than all the work and more than all the honors, the sheer pleasure of living in Harlem is what drives Samuelsson.
“I always loved Harlem,” he says. “I read about it before I even came to America. I wanted to be part of this community. After a year of living here, I knew I wanted to open a restaurant here.
“The Red Rooster was originally a speakeasy in the 1940s. I felt that it was important to pick a name that had been there before. It was so important to me to be in Harlem and of Harlem.”
Marcus Samuelsson’s favorite things
* A stuffed toy monkey that his adoptive grandmother made
* A painting of a prize fight between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol by R. Gregory Christie
* A photo of Samuelsson with the Obamas at the White House
* The shoes (below) he got when he left Ethiopia and went to Sweden when he was 3
* A family dinner bell
* An abstract painting by Julie Mehretu
* His collages; he created most of the art in the apartment
* His cooking sneakers