Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir
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“Kwame Onwuachi’s story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world.” —Questlove
By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.” He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef.
Through it all, Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color. In this inspirational memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age; a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest account of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected.
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Kwame Onwuachi. (2019). Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Kwame Onwuachi. 2019. Notes From a Young Black Chef: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Kwame Onwuachi, Notes From a Young Black Chef: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2019.
MLA Citation (style guide)Kwame Onwuachi. Notes From a Young Black Chef: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2019.
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- bioText: Kwame Onwuachi is the James Beard Award-winning executive chef at Kith/Kin in Washington, D.C. He was born on Long Island and raised in New York City, Nigeria, and Louisiana. Onwuachi was first exposed to cooking by his mother, in the family’s modest Bronx apartment, and he took that spark of passion and turned it into a career. From toiling in the bowels of oil cleanup ships to working at some of the best restaurants in the world, he has seen and lived his fair share of diversity. Onwuachi trained at the Culinary Institute of America and opened five restaurants before turning thirty. A former Top Chef contestant, he has been named Esquire’s Chef of the Year, one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs, and a 30 Under 30 honoree by both Zagat and Forbes.
Joshua David Stein is a Brooklyn-based author and journalist. He is the co-author of Food & Beer, the U.S. editor of Where Chefs Eat, the author of forthcoming To Me He Was Just Dad as well as the children’s books, Can I Eat That?, What’s Cooking?, Brick: Who Found Herself in Architecture and The Ball Book. Stein was previously the restaurant critic for the New York Observer and the Village Voice. He is the founding member of The Band Books and the food zine, Reduced Circumstance. - name: Kwame Onwuachi
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- A memoir from “the most important chef in America” (San Francisco Chronicle) and chef of Tatiana, the New York Times #1 Restaurant in New York City 2023.
“Kwame Onwuachi’s story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world.” —Questlove
By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.” He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef.
Through it all, Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color. In this inspirational memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age; a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest account of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected. - reviews
- premium: False
- source: Carla Hall, author of Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration
- content: A James Beard Foundation Award and IACP Cookbook Award nominee
"Fierce and inspiring."
- premium: False
- source: Ed Levine, Serious Eats
- content: "Notes from a Young Black Chef might be the literary heir to Kitchen Confidential. . . . With the same mix of brutal honesty, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and atmosphere-conjuring prose. But Onwuachi's story is completely his own."
- premium: False
- source: The Washington Post
- content: "Onwuachi's memoir should be required reading, not just for future chefs, but for anyone who wants a glimpse into one man's tale of what it's like to be young, black and ambitious in America."
- premium: False
- source: Food & Wine
- content: "A fascinating book. . . . I hope everybody reads it."
- premium: False
- source: Michael W. Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
- content: "Stunning."
- premium: False
- source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
- content: "Kwame Onwuachi's story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
February 15, 2019
An ambitious chef chronicles his rocky journey to success.In an impassioned debut memoir, Onwuachi, assisted by journalist and restaurant critic Stein, reflects on his unlikely transformation from a gang member to--at the age of 27--the chef of his own fine-dining restaurant in Washington, D.C., where he currently is executive chef at another venue. Growing up in the Bronx, he shifted between his mother's cramped apartment and the upscale home of his sadistic father, who fell into ferocious rages and beat him. The beatings only incited the author's rebelliousness, and his frustrated mother sent him to live with his grandfather in Nigeria to "learn respect." Whatever self-knowledge he gained in Nigeria, though, did not survive the violence-ridden Bronx projects, where he soon earned status and money by dealing drugs. He continued to deal in college, pocketing $3,000 per week selling to dorm mates, until he was expelled. Depressed and rootless but enamored by cooking, Onwuachi took "a sad-ass parade of short-lived menial jobs" in restaurants and, briefly, worked with his mother, a caterer. As cook on a cleanup ship for the Deepwater Horizon spill, he grew certain that he had "the palate, the recipes, the heart" to be a first-rate chef. To hone his skills, he enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America, at the same time running his own catering company to pay tuition. An externship at the famed Manhattan restaurant Per Se and a job at the prestigious Eleven Madison Park were intense, eye-opening experiences. Onwuachi is forthright about the obstacles he faced: kitchens "poisoned by racism" and the assumption that "what the world wants to see is a black chef making black food." Determined to succeed on his own terms, he learned "to hustle to get ahead, to write my own story, and to manipulate, to the extent that I could, how I was seen." Recipes following each chapter show the range of Onwuachi's talents.Grit and defiance infuse a revealing self-portrait.COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from March 11, 2019
Chef and former Top Chef contestant Onwuachi wonderfully chronicles the amazing arc of his life, beginning with his challenging Bronx childhood in the 1990s with his African-American mother and his absentee Nigerian father. As a teen he began dealing drugs, and was later sent to Nigeria to live with his grandfather in order to “get out of my mother’s hair.” He returned to live with his mother, who had moved to Baton Rouge. There, he learned to cook at a local barbecue restaurant and took a job as a cook on an oil-spill response ship in the Gulf of Mexico; he eventually moved back to New York City, where Tom Colicchio hired him at Craft. In 2016, he opened his restaurant Shaw Bijou in Washington, D.C., which for him represented “years of busting my ass, of constant forward movement, of grasping opportunities manufactured to be beyond my grasp.” For his customers, he writes, “I had found a way to convert, through food, not just the warmth and love of my upbringing but also the struggles I’d faced.” Onwuachi includes Pan-African recipes throughout, inspired by the flavors of the African continent, the Caribbean, and the U.S., such as egusi stew and chicken and waffles. In the vein of Marcus Samuelsson’s Yes, Chef, this is a solid and inspiring memoir.
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February 1, 2019
The path to success and celebrity in the restaurant world never runs smoothly, and for people of color, that journey can be even more fraught. Top Chef veteran Onwuachi became obsessed with food and cooking at a young age. His Bronx apartment building teemed with immigrants. Whenever he sniffed some new aroma, he'd prowl halls on all floors until he could track down just whose kitchen was concocting such heady perfumes. Raised between New York and Nigeria, his father's homeland, Onwuachi was exposed at an early age to some of the food world's diversity. The Culinary Institute of America gave him a rigorous education. Apprenticing in some of the world's most acclaimed kitchens, he eventually launched a catering business before starting his own restaurant, working his way through several failures before success. Onwuachi concludes each chapter with a recipe, in one case, a straightforward cheesecake; in another, a Nigerian egusi stew summoning ingredients readers will likely have to seek out online or in specialty shops.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)
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March 1, 2019
Having been raised partly in the Bronx and partly in Nigeria, Onwuachi opened his first catering company with $20,000 he made selling candy on the subway, then went on to become a Top Chef star and a Forbes and Zagat 30 Under 30 honoree who has cooked twice at the White House. He's now executive chef at Kith and Kin in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, though, the world of classy eats isn't always easy on people of color. With author/journalist Stein (e.g., the U.S. editor of Where Chefs Eat), Onwuachi shares his highs and lows; recipes, too.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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“Kwame Onwuachi’s story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world.” —Questlove
By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.” He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef.
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