Notes from a Young Black Chef

November 15, 2018

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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.

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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.

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.)