On the homepage of his website, chef Marcus Samuelsson says, "My passion for food has no geographic boundaries." His lack of concern for boundaries comes naturally. The celebrated New York chef who cooked for the Obamas' first White House state dinner last November was born in a village in Ethiopia. When he was three, his mother died of tuberculosis, and he and his sister were adopted by a Swedish homemaker and her geologist husband and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Samuelsson's love of cooking came from his adoptive grandmother Helga; it led him to culinary school in Gothenburg, then to jobs in Austria, Switzerland and France. When he was 21, he traveled to New York City to apprentice at Aquavit. Within three years, Samuelsson was named co-owner and executive chef there. His willingness to use distinctly non-Swedish ingredients such as curry and lemongrass transformed the restaurant. Laura Yee reported in Restaurants & Institutions that what had been "a respectable Scandinavian restaurant best known among Swedish expatriates and comrades began to build a national reputation." Months later, Samuelsson became the youngest chef ever to receive a three-star restaurant review from The New York Times.

And the accolades kept coming. Samuelsson won the 1999 James Beard Foundation award for "Rising Star Chef" as well as its 2003 award for "Best Chef in New York City" and was named one of The Great Chefs of America by the Culinary Institute of America.

As you might expect, Samuelsson takes his influences from many places--including Africa, Sweden, France, Japan, Latin America, the United States--and he has restaurants in Chicago, Los Angeles and even back in Sweden. But while he considers himself a "global citizen," New York City is definitely his home. He and his wife, Ethiopian-born model Gate Haile, live in Harlem. Samuelsson is opening his latest restaurant, Red Rooster Harlem, in their neighborhood sometime this fall. Named for a legendary Harlem Renaissance speakeasy, it will feature American cuisine, a lively neighborhood atmosphere and live music.

This Character Approved chef's generosity knows no boundaries either. Even while running a growing restaurant empire, writing cookbooks and venturing into television, he makes time for charitable causes. He is spokesman for UNICEF's Tap Project, an initiative to bring clean, accessible water to children around the world; he is active in C-CAP, an organization that helps NYC high school graduates gain internships to restaurants; and he supports World Childhood Foundation, founded by Sweden's Queen Silvia to aid at-risk children. To us, that makes him an upstanding global citizen.

[Images: JR Delia]