'Nightline' Platelist: Marcus Samuelsson

April 11, 2008 — -- He is the youngest chef to have received three stars from The New York Times.

He is a two-time James Beard Foundation Award winner. He has three Michelin stars. He was recognized as one of the "Great Chefs in America" by the Culinary Institute of America.

His name is Marcus Samuelsson and he is a culinary force to be reckoned with.

Clearly, he is not new on the scene, but what he brings to the palate is anything but old.

"I've always been very confident in my own capability. But it's a thin line between confidence and arrogance and you don't want to peak over and be arrogant about it. I'm confident. Just give me a shot, and I'll do well, " Samuelsson said.

But it seems as if he's always opened his own doors, not looking for any handouts. "It's always been positive doors open to me because I think I've had passion and positivity and work ethic. I think my parents gave that to me and my grandparents gave that to me," he said. "I've always been very lucky."

At 37 years old, Samuelsson has a resume that not only includes four restaurants, several best-selling cookbooks, a restaurant consulting company and a cooking show on the Discovery Home Channel, it also includes a few "most important" endeavors: being an ambassador for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and a mentor to high school students participating in the national careers through culinary arts program.

Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia in 1970. At the age of 3, his mother died after falling victim to the tuberculosis epidemic that had swept through his homeland.

He and his sister found refuge at a Swedish field hospital in nearby Addis Ababa.

Samuelsson and his sister were soon adopted by the Samuelsson family of Goteborg, Sweden.

"I was born in Ethiopia, and I was raised in Sweden and I think that will always shape me -- being adopted, being raised in Sweden. I couldn't imagine a bigger contrast of countries really," he said.

He remembers growing up Nordic fondly. "Our grandmother came to us after school. She always cooked or my mom cooked. I always got home cooking. Summertime we went up to the west coast and we lived in my father's birthplace, which was a fishing village. There you had to always work with food, whether it was smoking mackerel or fishing mackerel, or helping out with herrings. … Food has always been on my mind, and in my life as long as I remember. And maybe for the first three years it was a lack of food. We were not healthy when we came to Sweden, but it's always been -- food's always been really good to me."

But something called him back to Africa.