Celebrating black culinarians: a salute to legendary chefs and a road map for prospective food prepares

Ebony, Nov, 2006 by Marcus Samuelsson

WHILE I was writing my most recent cookbook, Soul of a New Cuisine, which concentrates on African cooking, two things flashed through my mind repeatedly. The first is that the cuisines and techniques found throughout most of Africa are so similar to the kinds of food and ways of cooking in this country and throughout other parts of the Americas. The second thing that ran through my mind is the fact that both Africans and African-Americans share such a rich culinary history--one that includes so many unsung heroes, past and present.

If you look at foods from the continent of Africa and the foods in this country, particularly in the South, it's easy to see the connection--rice, yams, okra, black-eyed peas, leafy greens, peanuts, onions, and the list goes on. It all began in Africa. Jessica B. Harris, a friend and inspiration for my book, says it best in her book, Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons. "Cooking on the continent and in the New World can be summed up in one [phrase]: 'Same boat, different stops.'"

Of course the main vehicle for African foods' movement to North (and South) America was the trans-atlantic slave trade. Blacks were brought forcibly to the Americas to provide labor, which--along with working sugar cane fields, tobacco and cotton plantations--also included cooking. Though they were in a distant land, Blacks who worked as cooks tried to reproduce foods from the homes they were forced to leave. You can see the influence in many dishes here, such as Jambalaya, which is very similar to the Senegalese dish Joloff Rice.

One shining star of this culinary tradition was Edna Lewis, a granddaughter of slaves who recently passed. Born in Virginia, she learned how to cook the food immediately around her, locally grown and seasonal foods. When Lewis moved to New York City, she made a name for herself as a chef. In the 1940s and '50s it was her food that made Cafe Nicholson world famous for its roast chicken, cheese souffles, and chocolate souffles. During her reign, the cafe became a hangout for society folk and artists like Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams.

Lewis went on to work at the oldest continuously running restaurant in New York, Gage and Tollner. There, she transformed and revitalized the menu using her Southern sensibilities with dishes like Charleston She-crab Soup, spicy shrimp and crab gumbo, quail and spoon bread, braised beef brisket, and Southern-fried chicken. Food critics from the New York Times continuously praised her food.

In addition to Lewis' skills at creating scrumptious dishes, she was also a talented cookbook writer, penning The Taste of Country Cooking, In Pursuit of Flavor and, more recently, she co-authored The Gift of Southern Cooking.

The baton of culinary talent has been passed on to many other people of color in this country. Coming from a different tradition and a younger generation was Patrick Clark. Born the son of a chef, Clark studied at New York's Technical College and was encouraged to get further training in France, where he worked with chef Michel Guerard at Eugenie les Bains.

Clark helped make classical French cuisine--considered the bedrock of western cooking--more approachable when he created his own version of contemporary American cuisine with dishes like Horseradish Crusted Grouper and mashed potatoes, jerk chicken with sweet potato cakes, rack of lamb with fried white-bean ravioli and salmon with Moroccan barbeque sauce. I remember when I moved to New York, everyone told me I had to meet Patrick Clark. He's someone I admired and looked up to.

Patrick was a brilliant and generous chef who probably was considered to be the first Black celebrity chef. Named best Mid-Atlantic chef by the James Beard Foundation in 1995, Clark was a part of the team that created Odeon in Tribeca and Cafe Luxembourg in Lincoln Center. He went on to work at Bice in Los Angeles, opened his own restaurant, Metro, was chef at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C., and finally, was executive chef at Tavern on the Green in New York City, where he worked until his untimely death in 1998.

Patrick's gift was the fact that he made fine dining accessible with his gusto and energy. We are blessed because one of his sons, Preston Clark, is a rising culinary talent, working through the ranks of fine restaurants such as my own, Aquavit, and now at Jean-Georges in New York City.

Looking at these stars and the rich history of food culture that Blacks created in this country begs the question, What is the state of Blacks in the food industry today? What are the challenges? And what can we do to rise higher?

I turned these questions over to some of my friends and celebrated colleagues in the industry who have been sources of inspiration for me in my career. My friend Marvin Woods, chef, author and television personality on Home Plate, points out that the media do not give people of color play. "We're out there," Marvin says. "I can name lots of people--Cary Neff in Arizona; Bernard Camouche, who is Emeril's right-hand man; Andre Mack who was the top sommelier at Per Se (the No. I beer brewer last year was a Brother)--you just don't hear about them." He went on to say: "You have a major network [Food Network] that airs food shows 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the past 13 years, and over the past 13 years has had only five or six hosts of color, and none of them were chefs. One of my goals is to break that glass ceiling. I feel like I'm the Spike Lee of the food industry. It all comes down to racism ..."