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Chef Kwame Onwuachi wants everyone to have a seat at his table

It's pretty unusual for a 32-year-old chef to open his own restaurant in Manhattan. 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.

But then, Chef Kwame Onwuachi's rise to superstar chefdom has been a little crazy. Drugs and gangs were part of a tough upbringing in the South Bronx. After getting kicked out of college, he moved to Louisiana and cooked for a crew cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He'd found his calling. Back in New York, he enrolled in culinary school and thrived, graduating straight into a job at the Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park.

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. He was 27. 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. 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. There, his execution of an autobiographical Afro-Caribbean menu was rewarded with the James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year award.

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. Tatiana is named after Kwame's big sister, who looked after him at home in the Bronx while their mother was at work. 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. 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.

Copyright 2023 Classical California

Lara Downes
Lara Downes is among the foremost American pianists of her generation, a trailblazer both on and off the stage, whose musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family and collective memory. As a chart-topping recording artist, a powerfully charismatic performer, a curator and tastemaker, Downes is recognized as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

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Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.

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