No Passport Required: Still connecting with food and having a conversation about it with Marcus Samuelsson

Earlier this year, chef Marcus Samuelsson of Food Network Chopped fame took an inspiring journey across the United States in which he explored – and celebrated – the wide-ranging diversity of immigrant traditions and cuisine woven into American food and culture.

On “No Passport Required,” a six-episode PBS/Eater series which first aired across the U.S. during the summer months, Samuelsson visited Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago, New York City, Miami and Washington, D.C. An immigrant himself, who was born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden, Samuelsson discovered dynamic and creative ways in which a particular community thrives – making its mark, so to speak. He spoke to poets and musicians, business owners and community leaders, as well as artists and home cooks – each who have contributed to enhancing our nation’s culture and its cuisine.

In Detroit, Samuelsson gathered with Middle Eastern immigrants who call the Motor City home and in New Orleans, he learned how the culinary traditions of the Vietnamese have been fully integrated into the fabric of the Big Easy, which has its long-established French and Creole influences. Samuelsson gathered with Ethiopians in Washington, D.C., and with the Indo-Guyanese in Queens, New York. He discovered how Chicago’s Mexican neighborhoods have impacted that area’s food and culture, and in Miami, he was welcomed by the city’s proud Haitian community.

The bottom line in Samuelsson’s adventures – and what I learned from watching – is this: there are many wondrous global food traditions that are waiting to be discovered throughout the United States. Sometimes, we just need a little bit of encouragement. After all, as the title of Samuelsson’s show reinforces, there’s No Passport Required.

 • • •

There’s a great back story about chef Samuelsson I blogged about six years ago that's worth sharing, again. Back in July 2012, he wrote a memoir, Yes, Chef – an incomparable story – about what it means to be an American. Through his cooking, he told a story that in the words of former President Bill Clinton, “reached past racial and national divides to the foundations of family, hope and downright good food.” Gabrielle Hamilton, the bestselling author of Blood, Bones & Butter said that Samuelsson exudes “a quiet bravery, and a lyrical and discreetly glittering style – in the kitchen and on the page.”

Thus, an opportunity to meet chef Samuelsson in person, hear him wax poetically on his life’s passion and get a signed copy of his memoir was too good an opportunity to pass up.

“It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson.” His memoir, Yes, Chef, became his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations.

As Samuelsson shared his fascinating life’s story at Book Passage’s intimate San Francisco Ferry Building store, he said, “Sometimes, the worst situation can become the best situation.”

In a chapter of Yes, Chef devoted to his grandmother, Helga, Samuelsson wrote: “Mormor (the Swedish word for mother’s mother) treated her house like it was her own little food factory. She made everything herself: jams, pickles, and breads. She bought large cuts of meat or whole chickens and game animals from the butcher and then broke them down into chops and roasts at home. It’s so funny to me how, today, we celebrate braising as some refined, elegant approach, when it’s the same slow cooking method Mormor used. Her menus followed a simple logic:

“You have bread today because it’s fresh. You have toast tomorrow because the bread has gone stale. You make croutons the next day, and whatever bread is left after that gets ground into crumbs that you’ll use to batter fish.

“I don’t think I saw a rib-eye steak until my late teens when I started working in restaurants. At home, we ate mostly ground meat that was rolled into balls and stretched even further by ample additions of breadcrumbs. We ate our own Swedish version of a hamburger: pan beef, a patty topped with caramel iced onions. Sometimes we ate beef Lindstrom: a hamburger patty mixed with onions, capers, and pickled beets before being seared in butter. That’s comfort food where I come from, and it’s damn good.”

• • •

At times, it’s been a struggle for Samuelsson to find his place, both in the kitchen and in the world. At least now, he has the appearance of a man who’s found peace in all the right places – and he’s always with a smile on his face.

“I am an immigrant, not a refugee,” Samuelsson reminds us. “There is a big difference. I am as a patriotic as any American. I am determined and grateful.”

As a chef, Samuelsson states that inside the kitchen or out, “it’s a matter of luck and the belief in others.

“Cooking has changed, but the core values remain the same. It’s about expressing a journey and culture. What better way than through food,” he says. And, besides, as Samuelsson playfully shared with his San Francisco audience on that summer night six years ago, “My fried chicken is better than yours!”

Encore: Who lives, who dies, who gets to tell your story?

Creative genius / Lin-Manuel Miranda

It's been said that works of art have long informed how people understand the past, and Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, which I saw for the second time in the past year last weekend in New York City, is no exception.

As the creative genius of the Broadway smash-hit Hamilton, Miranda changed the way that people considered one of the Founding Fathers and the era he lived in. In doing so, it put Miranda in lofty territory, alongside how Shakespeare transformed Richard III, and how the author Leon Uris romanticized the founding of Israel in his novel Exodus.

In revisiting an essay I wrote about Miranda in March 2016, here's some things worth noting:

In creating Hamilton, Miranda relied on the core elements of hip-hop and R & B-inspired music as well as jazz, pop and Tin Pan Alley – plus a racially-diverse cast – to make history as relatable as possible. Soon after its 2015 debut, Hamilton became a certifiable Broadway box office hit – it remains one of the toughest, most-sought after tickets on Broadway – and the musical became centered around a story arc that relates Hamilton's life story, from his orphaned upbringing in the West Indies to his death in a duel at the hands of Aaron Burr.

"This is a story about America then, told by America now," Miranda, a native New Yorker of Puerto Rican heritage, once told The Atlantic, "and we want to eliminate any distance between a contemporary audience and this story."

In a September 29, 2015 essay for The Atlantic, Edward Delman wrote, "Hamilton, then, has the potential to strongly influence the way Americans think about the early republic. For one thing ... it understands Thomas Jefferson to be a deeply flawed individual. It presents an American history in which women and people of color share the spotlight with the founding fathers. The primarily black and Hispanic cast reminds audiences that American history is not just the history of white people, and frequent allusions to slavery serve as constant reminders that just as the revolutionaries were fighting for their freedom, slaves were held in bondage.

"Perhaps, the most significant lesson the show might teach audiences, and one that has particular relevance today, is the outsized role immigrants have played in the nation's history. Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant – a fact that Miranda repeatedly emphasizes throughout the show – and the musical also prominently features the Marquis de Lafayette, a French nobleman who played a crucial role during the revolutionary war."

It's pretty amazing to think back to the fascinating process which Miranda translated the history of the unlikely rise and untimely fall of the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, onto the stage. He drew upon the Ron Chernow biography of Hamilton for focus and inspiration. Then, flash back to May 12, 2009, when Miranda first performed "The Hamilton Mixtape" before an audience that included President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word, accompanied by pianist Alex Lacamoire.

In looking back at a February 2015 feature about Hamilton, Rebecca Meade of The New Yorker wrote: "It does not seem accidental that Hamilton was created during the tenure of the first African-American President. The musical presents the birth of the nation in an unfamiliar but necessary light: not solely as the world of élite white men but as the foundational story of all Americans. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington are all played by African-Americans. Miranda also gives prominent roles to women, including Hamilton's wife Eliza Schuyler, and sister-in-law Angelica Schuyler. When they are joined by a third sister, their zigzagging harmonies sound rather like those of Destiny's Child.

"Miranda portrays the Founding Fathers not as exalted statesmen but as orphaned sons, reckless revolutionaries, and sometimes petty rivals, living at a moment of extreme volatility, opportunity, and risk. The achievements and the dangers of America's current moment – under the Presidency of a fatherless son of an immigrant, born in the country's island margins – are never far from view."

The Grammy Award-winning original cast recording, produced by The Roots' Questlove and Black Thought – has been a welcome companion of mine on my car stereo for several years – and I never really tire of its songs.

"I don't know how many really good ideas you get in a lifetime," Miranda once told The Hollywood Reporter, "but the idea of telling Hamilton as a hip-hop story was definitely one because you get to do everything: love and death and a war and duels and revenge and affairs and sex scandals."

One thing remains certain: Thanks to Miranda's genius, the Tony Award-winning Hamilton continues to have a positive influence in altering our perception of American history, and the role in which artists are helping shape historical narrative. And, Miranda knows that he can't stop being who he is just because more people are looking at him.

Photo credits: Lin-Manuel Miranda's Twitter feed and Google Images. Video/audio credit: YouTube.com.

Who lives, who dies, who gets to tell your story?

Lin-Manuel Miranda /
Writer, composer, star, genius of "Hamilton".

It's been said that works of art have long informed how people understand the past, and Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton is no exception.

As the writer, composer, and star of the Broadway smash-hit Hamilton, Miranda is changing the way that people consider one of the Founding Fathers and the era he lived in. It puts him in lofty territory, alongside how Shakespeare transformed Richard III, and how the author Leon Uris romanticized the founding of Israel in his novel Exodus.

The recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" grant, the 36-year-old Miranda relies on the core elements of hip-hop and R & B-inspired music as well as jazz, pop and Tin Pan Alley – plus a racially-diverse cast – to make history as relatable as possible. Hamilton has become a certifiable Broadway box office hit – tickets are sold out into early 2017 – and the musical is centered around a story arc that related Hamilton's life story, from his orphaned upbringing in the West Indies to his death in a duel at the hands of Aaron Burr.

"This is a story about America then, told by America now," said Miranda, a native New Yorker, in an interview with The Atlantic, "and we want to eliminate any distance between a contemporary audience and this story."

The real Alexander Hamilton (L) and Lin-Manuel Miranda,
who portrays the First U.S. Treasury Secretary in "Hamilton".

"Hamilton, then, has the potential to strongly influence the way Americans think about the early republic. For one thing ... it understands Thomas Jefferson to be a deeply flawed individual. It presents an American history in which women and people of color share the spotlight with the founding fathers. The primarily black and Hispanic cast reminds audiences that American history is not just the history of white people, and frequent allusions to slavery serve as constant reminders that just as the revolutionaries were fighting for their freedom, slaves were held in bondage," wrote Edward Delman in a September 29, 2015 essay for The Atlantic. 

"Perhaps the most significant lesson the show might teach audiences, and one particular relevance today, is the outsized role immigrants have played in the nation's history. Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant – a fact that Miranda repeatedly emphasizes throughout the show – and the musical also prominently features the Marquis de Lafayette, a French nobleman who played a crucial role during the revolutionary war."

Lin-Manuel Miranda / The artist at work.

The process which Miranda translated the history of the unlikely rise and untimely fall of the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, onto the stage is a fascinating one. The origin of
Hamilton dates back to May 12, 2009, when Miranda performed "The Hamilton Mixtape" before an audience that included President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken World, accompanied by pianist Alex Lacamoire.

Lin-Manuel Miranda (center) translated the history of the
unlikely rise and untimely fall of the first U.S. Treasury
Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, in "Hamilton". 

In a February 2015 feature about Hamilton, Rebecca Meade of The New Yorker wrote: "It does not seem accidental that Hamilton was created during the tenure of the first African-American President. The musical presents the birth of the nation in an unfamiliar but necessary light: not solely as a work of élite white men but as the foundational story of all Americans. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington are all played by African-Americans. Miranda also gives prominent roles to women, including Hamilton's wife, Eliza Schuyler (Phillipa Soo), and sister-in-law, Angelica Schuyler (Renée Elise Goldsberry). When they are joined by a third sister, their zigzagging harmonies sound rather like those of Destiny's Child. Miranda portrays the Founding Fathers not as exalted statesmen but as orphaned sons, reckless revolutionaries, and sometimes petty rivals, living at a moment of extreme volatility, opportunity, and risk. The achievements and the dangers of America's current moment – under the Presidency of a fatherless son of an immigrant, born in the country's island margins – are never far from view."

The original cast recording, produced by The Roots' Questlove and Black Thought – which has been a constant companion of mine in my car stereo the past couple of weeks – recently garnered a Grammy Award, and Hamilton most assuredly and deservedly will clean up at this summer's Tony Awards.

"I don't know how many really good ideas you get in a lifetime," Miranda recalled in a December 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, "But the idea of telling Hamilton as a hip-hop story was definitely one because you get to do everything: love and death and a war and duels and revenge and affairs and sex scandals."

One thing's certain: thanks to Miranda's genius, Hamilton is having a positive influence in altering our perception of American history, and the role in which artists are helping shape the historical narrative.