Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
“You couldn’t ask the universe for a more colorful creative culinary adventurer than chef Kwame, who blends the stories and history of his African and African American heritage into a literary pot of brilliant cultural flavors.” Alexander Smalls, coauthor of Between Harlem and Heaven
Review
“This is the future of Black food writing and a new chapter in the saga of how chefs come of age.” Michael W. Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Review
“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.” Entertainment Weekly
About the Author
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.