Excerpt 2: from Chapter 3

In early January of 1995, Jan Sandel, the executive chef at the Swedish restaurant Aquavit in New York City, unexpectedly died of a heart attack. The owner, Hakan Swahn, immediately had to find someone to head up the kitchen. He decided to place newly hired Marcus Samuelsson in charge while he searched for a permanent replacement. But Swahn was hesitant because Samuelsson was quite young. "Our organization was big and complex, and our reputation was excellent. It is not the type of operation you just hand over to a twenty-four-year-old," he explained. In retrospect, it may have been the best decision he ever made.

At the time, Aquavit had become a well-respected Manhattan restaurant, with one star from the New York Times. But something strange started happening only weeks after Samuelsson headed up the kitchen. New dishes based on unique combinations of food from all over the world began showing up on the menu. The new items, such as oysters with mango curry sorbet, didn't always seem to make sense, but they tickled both the imagination and the palate. They were unlike anything the guests had ever tasted before.

Only three months later Ruth Reichl of the New York Times gave the restaurant a rare three-star review because of its innovative and tasty food. Samuelsson was the youngest chef to have ever received such a prestigious rating. "Mr. Samuelsson's cooking is delicate and beautiful," she wrote. Since then he has become known as one of America's leading chefs. He has been featured in magazines such as Gourmet, Food & Wine, Forbes, and Gear, and on networks such as the Discovery Channel and CNN. His cookbook was voted the Best Cookbook in North America, the James Beard Foundation awarded him Best Chef in New York City, and he was recognized by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as one of the Global Leaders of Tomorrow. When Aquavit owner Swahn met Tom Zagat, of the famous restaurant guide Zagat Survey, Zagat remarked, "You have become an institution."

What was behind Marcus Samuelsson's spectacular achievements? What were the reasons for his innovative success? Talking to Samuelsson, one might get the impression that pure charm, youthful energy, and hard work are the secret. His voice is filled with vigor and purpose. He is quick to jump up and greet any customer he recognizes, which is almost all of them.4 His memory of faces and names seems limitless. Within minutes he had me engaged with a number of guests who had just walked through the door. "Meet Renee," he said with a smile. "She is the president of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce. You guys should talk." Charisma, energy, and persistence—without a doubt these qualities will help anyone, but they alone cannot explain his rise to chef stardom. Solving that mystery must start with his culinary creations.

There is clearly something special about the food that Samuelsson creates. The menu says the food is Swedish, and you can instantly see that this is true. Ingredients such as herring, lingonberry, and salmon in part define Swedish cuisine. At Aquavit, however, these ingredients are combined with foods you would never see at a typical Swedish restaurant, at least not until Samuelsson began using them.
Take a look at the following menu items:

Caramelized Lobster:Seaweed Pasta, Sea Urchin Sausage and Cauliflower Sauce

Salmon Plate:Gravlax and Tandoori Smoked Salmon, Espresso Mustard Sauce and Dill Foam

Chocolate Ganache:Bell Pepper and Raspberry Sorbet and Lemon Grass Yogurt

Lobster is Swedish; seaweed pasta is not. Raspberry sorbet is Swedish; lemon grass yogurt . . . well, most Swedes at this time had probably not even heard of lemon grass, let alone yogurt made out of it. In these recipes we can find at least part of the answer to the mystery of Samuelsson's success. Although it defies intuition, combining tandoori spices and smoked salmon works extraordinarily well, and that daring is what makes Samuelsson unique. Impossible combinations are original and playfully wonderful. How about nettle soup with a sea urchin lollipop? Or a dessert of green apple sorbet with white chocolate mousse and whipped fennel cream? By using Swedish culinary building blocks consisting of seafood, fresh ingredients, game, and certain preservation techniques, Samuelsson combines foods from all over the world, giving Aquavit guests a unique and stellar adventure in tastes and flavors.

Samuelsson has accomplished this by breaking down traditional barriers in cooking. He has an uncanny ability to draw associations from almost any cuisine in the world and see how they connect with his base of Swedish ingredients and cooking techniques. This ability has placed him at the intersection of Swedish food and global tastes. The solution to our mystery now seems rather simple. Samuelsson's creative genius lies in his ability to generate unique food combinations that surprise the palate. He creates food that is daring, distinctive, and, of course, extremely good. Marcus Samuelsson and Aquavit should be doing well.

But New York City is made up of thousands of restaurants, many of them with outstanding chefs who have seen and experienced food from all over the world. How was Samuelsson, at such a young age, able to so stun food critics and lay diners alike? How did he escape the limitations of what could be labeled Swedish or European cooking? What enables him to so freely connect disparate concepts, ideas, ingredients, and styles?

The answer is that Samuelsson has low associative barriers. He has an ability to easily connect different concepts across fields. Specifically, he has an ability to find winning combinations of foods from Sweden and the rest of the world. We can all break down our associative barriers like that. In fact, if we wish to find the Intersection, it is a requirement.