Quotes from Marcus Samuelsson

Each city should have its own type of restaurant.

I had great schooling, and my parents were always in front of me, or next to me, or behind me, making sure I had whatever I needed.

As people of color, it took a whole generation in many ways to get us out of the kitchen, and it's gonna take us the same whole generation to get us back into the kitchen and have ownership of restaurants, hotels and stuff like that.

Packing lunches and going over menus is a great way to make small changes in the way your kids eat.

I met Charlie Trotter before I actually saw him in person; I was 24 when I first opened the pages of Charlie's cookbook 'Charlie Trotter's' and was greeted by a man I would know and admire for the next 20 years.

I had seen the photographs of Harlem in its glory days, stylish men in bespoke suits, women so well dressed that they'd put the models in 'Vogue' to shame. I knew that Harlemites loved to dance, to pray, and to eat.

You have to balance, but you can be aggressive as a chef. It benefits the food. You have to be passionate. You can't be angry cooking.

I'm a firm believer that people find their own passions.

As a chef, I could not wash my hands - nor clean pots, pans, utensils, meats or produce, nor make soups and sauces - if I did not have clean water. Were this to happen, of course, these would be the least of my concerns. Because water is the linchpin of survival: without it, not much else matters.

I can take a lot of pride that I can launch cookbooks and there's an audience out there that supports that.

As a chef and activist, I'm particularly concerned with food politics issues such as the farm bill.

In Africa, you have no clean water, but you have good food options. In Harlem, everyone can shower and get fresh water, but you often have bad food options.

I credit my grandmother for teaching me to love and respect food. She taught me how to waste nothing, to make sure I used every bit of the chicken and boil the bones till no flavor could be extracted from them.

We struggle with eating healthily, obesity, and access to good nutrition for everyone. But we have a great opportunity to get on the right side of this battle by beginning to think differently about the way that we eat and the way that we approach food.

I think that if you grind your spices and keep them in small batches, you can use them in endless ways. The key thing is to have a spice mill or a coffee grinder, and to keep your spices cold and in tightly lidded boxes.

There are so many times there could have been a left turn instead of a right turn in all people's lives. I think mine are pretty crystal clear, because of being adopted, being born in Ethiopia, being adopted to Sweden.

Food has always been in my life. Being born in Ethiopia, where there was a lack of food, and then really cooking with my grandmother Helga in Sweden. And my grandmother Helga was a cook's cook.

I came into this environment where there was so much love, so much positive energy. I never heard my parents say, 'We have adopted kids.' The minute my sister Linda and I landed in Sweden, we were their kids.

Sweden was once a very homogenous society, but no more. For decades, people have been coming into Sweden from all over the world, and that's changed the way we cook.

Between the ages of six and nine, my palette was taking shape as well as my identity as a chef. It was then that I learned the difference between salty, sweet, sour and even spicy.

In Ethiopia, food is often looked at through a strong spiritual lens, stronger than anywhere else I know. It's the focal point of weddings, births and funerals and is a daily ceremony from the preparation of the meal and the washing of hands to the sharing of meals.

I'm an avid runner and play soccer every weekend, but I also have to constantly watch what I eat, and I'm always thinking about how to balance my meals.

When I get the chance to make my favorite breakfast on the weekend, I often choose to make pancakes.

In America, we are engaged in constant battle with food.