Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir
“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 (winner of the 2019 James Beard Foundation Award for Rising Star Chef of the Year) had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars that he made from selling candy on the subway, yet he’d been told he would never make it on television because his cooking wasn’t “Southern” enough. In this inspiring memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age.
Growing up in the Bronx, as a boy Onwuachi was sent to rural Nigeria by his mother to “learn respect.” However, the hard-won knowledge gained in Africa was not enough to keep him from the temptation and easy money of the streets when he returned home. But through food, he broke out of a dangerous downward spiral, embarking on a new beginning at the bottom of the culinary food chain as a chef on board a Deepwater Horizon cleanup ship, before going on to train in the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country and appearing as a contestant on Top Chef.
Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant throughout, even when he found the road to success riddled with potholes. As a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the world of fine dining can be for people of color, and his first restaurant, the culmination of years of planning, shuttered just months after opening. A powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest story of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected—Notes from a Young Black Chef is one man’s pursuit of his passions, despite the odds.
“This is an astonishing and open-hearted story from one of the next generation’s stars of the culinary world. I am so excited to see what the future holds for Chef Kwame—he is a phoenix, rising into better and better things and showing us all what it means to be humble, hungry, and daring.” —José Andrés
By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi (winner of the 2019 James Beard Foundation Award for Rising Star Chef of the Year) had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars that he made from selling candy on the subway, yet he’d been told he would never make it on television because his cooking wasn’t “Southern” enough. In this inspiring memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age.
Growing up in the Bronx, as a boy Onwuachi was sent to rural Nigeria by his mother to “learn respect.” However, the hard-won knowledge gained in Africa was not enough to keep him from the temptation and easy money of the streets when he returned home. But through food, he broke out of a dangerous downward spiral, embarking on a new beginning at the bottom of the culinary food chain as a chef on board a Deepwater Horizon cleanup ship, before going on to train in the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country and appearing as a contestant on Top Chef.
Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant throughout, even when he found the road to success riddled with potholes. As a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the world of fine dining can be for people of color, and his first restaurant, the culmination of years of planning, shuttered just months after opening. A powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest story of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected—Notes from a Young Black Chef is one man’s pursuit of his passions, despite the odds.
“This is an astonishing and open-hearted story from one of the next generation’s stars of the culinary world. I am so excited to see what the future holds for Chef Kwame—he is a phoenix, rising into better and better things and showing us all what it means to be humble, hungry, and daring.” —José Andrés
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Community Reviews
This book was originally a shakey 4 for me. After making his Jamaican curry recipe and loving it, I'm moving this review up to a solid 4.5 stars.
I had a lot of excitement and hope for this book but was disappointed. With the era of Anthony Bourdain/ Kitchen Confidential well established before this was written (and the Bear TV series lately), I feel like this book does not cover anything new or unique or to have any depth that the author was willing to further explore. I didn't just find the fact the author wrote this book in their mid 20s to be pretentious but their lack of acknowledgement of their privileged opportunities and options that made their choices in their teens a bit cushioned took away from the reading experience. You can definitely feel the author's writing improved as the chapters developed but I have to say, this is not a book worth anyone's time.
Love a relate-able rags to riches story. Wish more culinary information was given but I understood it’s about him not cooking specifically. Loved his tenacity.
“I loved helping her make scalloped potatoes most of all. She minced the garlic and onions and sliced the potatoes while I layered them in a casserole dish and tended the garlic and herbs as they softened in a hot pan. We never fought in the kitchen. It’s hard to, when you’re standing side by side at the counter”
Notes from a Young Black Chef is the intriguing story of Kwame Onwuachi’s life, his journey and rise into the culinary world and the lessons he learned along the way. Kwame grew up in Bronx and spent some time in Nigeria with his grandfather where he was sent to” learn respect” and where he ended up connecting with his ancestors and they became a part of him.
Brought up by an abusive father and a mother, who was loving and supportive of his dreams he shares “No matter how rough the week had been or how much we had scrounged for money or how hard we fought on Saturday night, Sunday morning was a chance for our family to hit reset”. He also shares his fall into the world of drugs and his wake-up call, his time at Maine where he learned to see beyond his own biases and how he found his craft (through his catering company and at CIA), and the highs and lows of the opening of his first restaurant.
In this book, he brings to attention a lot of relevant issues like what it is to be a black chef in America and how difficult can it be to fight with circumstances in one’s life and not be defined by those. “For as long as I can remember, I've been able to move back and forth, uptown and downtown, between the black and white worlds and in between...I knew how to be black in Nigeria, black in Soho, black in Harlem and the Bronx”.
We may all feel differently about Kwame being too young (or not) to have a memoir written this early in his life (just 28 when he wrote it) but I think it’s safe to say that after reading it we will all find ourselves on the same side, applauding the fact that even though his journey till here was packed with challenges he always stood up after each blow, with confidence and bravery and that is why I’d like to recommend this book.
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