Marcus Samuelsson Is Coming to Pinecrest. Here's Why That Matters.

Marcus Samuelsson does not have a simple story. He was born in Ethiopia, orphaned young, adopted by a Swedish family, trained in kitchens across Europe, and eventually landed in Harlem — where he built Red Rooster into one of the most culturally significant restaurants in America. He has cooked at the White House. He has won James Beard Awards. He has spent twenty years asking, in public and in print, what it means to cook from a place you carry inside you rather than one you were born into.

On Thursday, October 22 at 7:00 PM , he brings that conversation to The Hub Miami in Pinecrest — for a Chef's Table evening built around his new book, Back to Green , moderated by Lee Schrager , founder of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. The event is presented in partnership with Books & Books.

Back to Green is a return to first principles. Samuelsson traces the arc from his Swedish childhood — foraging, farming, cooking close to the land — through a career spent at the center of global food culture, and arrives at a set of questions about sustainability that feel personal rather than political. Where does food come from? Who grows it? What does a chef owe the land that feeds the kitchen? The book is not a manifesto. It reads more like a reckoning.

It is also, characteristically for Samuelsson, a deeply visual document. He has always understood that food is inseparable from the people who make it and the places it comes from. Back to Green extends that understanding into the question of what sustainable cooking actually looks like — not as a trend, but as a practice.

Lee Schrager has been putting chefs in rooms with audiences for twenty-five years. He knows Samuelsson well — the chef has been part of SOBEWFF since its early editions — and he has the rare ability to move a conversation past the cookbook-tour format into something that actually reveals how a person thinks. Expect the evening to range: the origins of Back to Green , the state of American food culture, the role of immigrant kitchens in shaping what we eat, and what it looks like to build a restaurant group — Samuelsson Group now operates across New York, Miami, and beyond — with a conscience.

The Hub at Temple Beth Am programs with the ambition of a major arts institution from a campus in Pinecrest. The Chef's Table series — this season: Jamie Milne, Yotam Ottolenghi, Samuelsson, and Gail Simmons in December — is as strong a culinary lineup as anything happening in South Florida right now. These are not big-room events. They are intimate, they sell out, and the conversations tend to be worth the drive.

Thursday, October 22 · 7:00 PM The Hub Miami · 5950 N. Kendall Drive, Pinecrest, FL 33156 Tickets at thehubmiami.org or (305) 540-0700.