For Sarah Simmons (Food & Wine magazine’s Home Cook Superstar and Southern-born expat) and her business partner Jeremie Kittredge, opening a culinary salon was about bringing a southern love of dinner parties and supper clubs into a crowded, often gritty big city. (
You may remember this dinner we wrote about last year.

To say chef Marcus Samuelsson been “busy” in the last few years is akin to saying William Faulkner “wrote some stuff.” At 24-years-old, Chef Marcus Samuelsson was the youngest chef ever to receive three stars from the New York Times. The James Beard Foundation attached the accolade of “Best International Cookbook” to his 2006 African-inspired title, The Soul of a New Cuisine, and he served as the guest chef at the first state dinner held by the Obama administration in 2009. In 2010, Samuelsson won BRAVO’s hit cooking show Top Chef Masters, and simultaneously opened his Harlem Soul Food restaurant, Red Rooster. The secret to success at Red Rooster, however, has not been in the sauce, but rather in The South.