Party Time With Marcus Samuelsson

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Marcus Samuelsson…Aquavit…Red Rooster…Street Bird…The Food Network…No Passport Required…..that guy! I just love that guy!!! I had photographed him once before…years ago…where I set up a little food fight between him and chefs Tyler Florence and Melissa Kelly…

…so when Laura Baer asked me to shoot him at Marcus B&P…his new restaurant in Newark…for the New Jersey Monthly ‘Where To Eat Now’ cover, I was happy to hang with the Chef for some more fun times. Art Director Andy Ogilvie and I headed down to Newark to check out Marcus B&P…

The first thing that struck us was the bar that filled the entire front of the restaurant…

Yeah…that’ll work. And right next to the bar were these cover-ready booths…

So a few days later, Kaz and I loaded up the van, crossed the Hudson to do what we do…

But it is a restaurant…so let’s see some food…

OK…let’s move on to our cover shot…

Marcus had no reservations about dancing on a rather precarious tabletop…

And it looked good, but I still had to fire up Photoshop and to clean up the wall and get rid of that green stuff on the right side of the shot to make it truly cover-ready…

Now it was ready!

With two shots in the bag, we had just a little bit of time left before the place opened for dinner service and I spotted one more shot I wanted to do…at the Pass looking into the kitchen area…

It was a great place for a portrait of Marcus with chef James Bowen…

Everything is out right now in the August issue of New Jersey Monthly…

Huge thanks to Marcus and James…we had a blast!