![]() It's joyful food, infused with memories of home, a generous dash of love, and the soul of a young chef out to change the world, one dish at a time. The two-level restaurant consists of a downstairs dining area. The restaurant's cuisine honors family and legacy, with dishes that celebrate his ancestors and resurrect the histories of the Black and brown communities displaced in the 1950s when the construction of Lincoln Center razed the neighborhood known as San Juan Hill. The Shaw Bijou, the tasting menu-centric Shaw restaurant from recent 'Top Chef' alumn Kwame Onwuachi, opens its doors tomorrow. Tatiana is named after Kwame's big sister, who looked after him at home in the Bronx while their mother was at work. When Lincoln Center invited Kwame to open his own restaurant last year in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall, his expression was given free rein. There, his execution of an autobiographical Afro-Caribbean menu was rewarded with the James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year award. The economic model didn't work and the restaurant closed after only 11 weeks, but he brought the same inspiration to his next gig, a restaurant he named Kith and Kin. His vision was radical: an elevated, high-end tasting menu of the cuisines that shape his identity and his roots in Nigeria, the bayou and the Bronx. Kwame's big break came in 2015, when he competed on Top Chef and won the hearts of the television audience, the media and backers who helped him open his first restaurant, the Shaw Bijou, in Washington, D.C. ![]() ![]() Back in New York, he enrolled in culinary school and thrived, graduating straight into a job at the Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park. After getting kicked out of college, he moved to Louisiana and cooked for a crew cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Drugs and gangs were part of a tough upbringing in the South Bronx. For The New York Times to choose it as the best restaurant in the city five months after it opens? Well, that's kind of crazy.īut then, Chef Kwame Onwuachi's rise to superstar chefdom has been a little crazy. In February 2021, Onwuachi joined Food & Wine magazine as Executive Producer.It's pretty unusual for a 32-year-old chef to open his own restaurant in Manhattan. Esquire named Onwuachi its Chef of the Year for 2019, identifying Kith/Kin as one of the Best New Restaurants in America. At the 2019 James Beard Awards, Onwuachi was named Rising Star Chef of the Year. A followup cookbook, My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef was published in May 2022.įood & Wine magazine named Onwuachi one of its Best New Chefs in 2019. The book tells the story of his childhood in New York and Nigeria, and the opening of the Shaw Bijou. In 2019, Onwuachi published a memoir, Notes from a Young Black Chef, with Joshua David Stein. In July 2020, Onwuachi resigned his position at Kith/Kin. The restaurant received positive reviews from The Washington Post and the Michelin Guide. After two years of planning, but less than three months of. He named it "Kith and Kin", serving Afro-Caribbean cuisine influenced by his family ties to Louisiana, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Nigeria. Sunday brought a crushing blow to Top Chef alum Kwame Onwuachi and his still-brand-new Washington D.C. In late 2017, Onwuachi was hired to open a restaurant in the new InterContinental Hotel on D.C.'s Southwest Waterfront. After two months, Onwuachi scaled back the menu and reduced prices, but the primary investor closed the restaurant in January 2017. The reviews were mixed, and critics questioned whether it was worth the price. In November 2016, Onwuachi opened his own restaurant in a converted townhouse in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C., called the Shaw Bijou, serving a 13-course tasting menu. In 2015, he was a contestant on Top Chef (season 13). During culinary school, Onwuachi worked an externship at Per Se, and after graduation he worked as a line cook at Eleven Madison Park. In 2012, Onwuachi enrolled at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. He returned to New York City in 2010, waiting tables at Tom Colicchio's Craft before opening his own catering business, Onwuachi's Coterie Catering.
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