Kwame Onwuachi on His Path to Becoming a Chef

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now for a real palate cleanser as they say in the color recorders of the world, we turn to the joys of food and an extraordinary personal story. Kwame Onwuachi grew up in the Bronx with an abusive father. After misbehaving in school, he was sent to Nigeria to live with his relatives. But when he returned, he fell into a life of gangs and drugs. But against all odds, Onwuachi managed to pick himself up and get through cooking school. Today, he’s part of a new wave of kitchen trailblazers and he sat down with our Hari Sreenivasan to talk about his new memoir “Notes From a Young Black Chef”.

HARI SREENIVASAN, CONTRIBUTOR: Kwame Onwuachi, thanks for joining us.

KWAME ONWUACHI, AUTHOR, NOTES FROM A YOUNG BLACK CHEF: Of course. It’s a pleasure to be here.

SREENIVASAN: Your dream restaurant, you got to open it, by the time you were 26.

ONWUACHI: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: Right. The menu was weaved with your autobiography. This is something that you actually went out on almost a road show and you honed this. What is that story?

ONWUACHI: So it was a restaurant called the Shaw Bijou, you know. It was in the Shaw District of Washington, D.C. It was an historical black

district. Bijou means jewel in French, which is my mother. I’ve always wanted to name my first restaurant after her. So it was kind of like a double (INAUDIBLE). It was like the jewel of the Shaw. And we took this 200-year-old Italian row house and completely transformed it into a restaurant. We’re talking, you walk in, we structured the stairs to go straight up to a bar as soon as you walk in, and that was where your first course was. And there was a staircase that went into the kitchen and you had your next course. Then you go into the dining room and go back into the kitchen at some point in time. So there was like a lot — it was very interactive. It was very fun.

SREENIVASAN: What were the type of dishes and how were they informed by your life up to that point?

ONWUACHI: It was, you know, it was a narrative of my life story. So I remember the first course was inspired by my Jamaican grandmother. So I made like jerk duck prosciutto with a latorice stuff, like almost cigarette-looking tube with pistachio oil and pesto powder and quints and pineapple curd. And it was like this very Caribbean, but nutty and wholesome first snack. And we had so many other courses. We had a butter garlic crab that was inspired by my trip to Mumbai, this restaurant I really love called Trishna. That’s a butter garlic crab but we used Norwegian king crab and we made a bottarga out of uni and we tried to push the boundaries as much as we could and innovate while still paying homage to the narrative and it only lasted three months.

SREENIVASAN: What did you learn from that experience?

ONWUACHI: To pick better partners.

SREENIVASAN: Was it about the money? Was it about the —

ONWUACHI: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: But the food was solid?

ONWUACHI: Food was solid. I mean businesses close because they run out of money. That’s it. And for a restaurant to be only open three months, we just did not have enough working capital to get us through that hump.

SREENIVASAN: So you grew up in lots of places, but really the Bronx for until you were about 10-years-old.

ONWUACHI: Exactly.

SREENIVASAN: What did you get from your mom? Did cooking come to you at that age?

ONWUACHI: Yes. I mean she started a catering company in our one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx when I was about 5-years-old. So we and my sister became her first two employees and —

SREENIVASAN: Sous chefs?

ONWUACHI: Little sous chefs. It beat doing laundry. But I was peeling shrimp, fabricating vegetables at a very young age. And I think it really instilled a couple values in me at that time. You know, entrepreneurialism, creativity, and a passion for cooking. And it really shaped my career path and what I really wanted to do.

SREENIVASAN: So at the same time, when you’re not being a good sous chef, you’re going to school and sometimes getting in trouble for it.

ONWUACHI: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: What kind of trouble were you getting into in school?

ONWUACHI: I was known for doing pranks, being a class clown, but also staying out past when I was supposed to be home and smoking cigarettes in the park with my friends. So I was getting into a lot of trouble, I would say more than the average 9 or 10-year-old. And it’s easy to do in the Bronx. It’s easy to veer off on that wrong path. I mean I was saw as a problem, not just like as a problem child, but just as a problem, who would never really get his stuff together, get his act together. And I was given up on by a lot of my teachers at a very young age.

SREENIVASAN: At one point, your mom decides, why don’t you go to Nigeria for the summer, hang out with — this is where your dad is from. And the summer gets a little longer than you had expected.

ONWUACHI: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: What happened?

ONWUACHI: Well, I was there. My mother told me I was going to Nigeria to visit my grandfather. And it was September and school starts in September in New York. And I called her. I mean — and I had to drive to a call center. It wasn’t like I just picked up the cell phone and she told me I wasn’t coming home until I learned respect.

SREENIVASAN: How long did that take?

ONWUACHI: Two years.

SREENIVASAN: And did you learn it?

ONWUACHI: A little bit, yes. I think so. I learned it enough to come back.

SREENIVASAN: What did she mean? What was the problem that she thought spending a couple of years in Nigeria would solve?

ONWUACHI: I think it was really learning to appreciate the things that I have here. Things that you can’t really teach and things that I was taking for granted whether it was consciously or subconsciously at that age. So running water, electricity, you know, harvesting and raising your own food. You know, things that the rest of the world has to do, that make you — if you don’t go through that, you tend to forget that the things that you have are a privilege. You’re privileged, you know, with the basic means that we have here in America. So if you can internalize that and think about them on a day-to-day basis, you can then really explore the opportunities that are here.

SREENIVASAN: So you come back with this greater appreciation for life and a few years progressed and you join a gang. What happened? Why’d you get on this track?

ONWUACHI: I became a product of my environment. I came back definitely with a greater appreciation, but then started to get into the same types of situations that got me sent out there in the first place. And my mother moved to Louisiana for my senior year in high school and I was kind of left to my own laurels a little bit.

SREENIVASAN: Here in New York.

ONWUACHI: Here in New York, yes.

SREENIVASAN: And so at this point, you are starting to deal drugs and you’re a part of a gang. You get into a college, but you’re still dealing, and that’s the reason you end up basically getting kicked out of school, too.

ONWUACHI: I went went to college with like zero dollars in my pocket and I had to figure out how to even pay tuition myself. So I did what I could and I ended up getting addicted to that fast life. And I remember the wake-up call for me was Obama winning the election and seeing him walk across the stage. Now, I had voted for him. I was very hopeful that a black man would become president, but I didn’t think it would happen. And when I saw him walk across that stage, I mean I thought to myself like, like it hasn’t even been 45 years since segregation was technically ended on paper, and here we have a man walking across television as the next president of the United States. If he can do that, I can do anything.

SREENIVASAN: And so this was literally the night after a party and you’re just kind of walking around dazed. And I want to read this paragraph that you have about this. I had never felt so alone or so rootless. I was hung over, strung out, and depressed. When I looked at what my life had become and who I had become, I felt a total estrangement. Something about seeing Obama in the television and when I turned the set off, seeing myself in the reflection brought myself into clear focus. I felt the world was moving forward without me. So what do you do after that?

ONWUACHI: Well, right after that, I flushed everything that I had down the toilet.

SREENIVASAN: All the drugs?

ONWUACHI: All the drugs. I gave whatever I had away to friends that were there and booked a one-way plane ticket to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

SREENIVASAN: And that’s where your mom was?

ONWUACHI: That’s where my mom was.

SREENIVASAN: And you also wrote that not until you were out on a gulf oil spill recovery ship that you really felt like a chef. What happened on that boat?

ONWUACHI: So I had worked a lot of odd jobs. I worked as a line cook. I worked as a waiter. I worked as a busboy, a dishwasher. But when I was on that boat, I was solely responsible for feeding 35 people, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, planning their meals, ordering the ingredients and making sure the kitchen was clean. I was creating the schedule for better or for worse, for people’s livelihood. They were working and they were eating and they were sleeping. So I was in charge of a third of what brought them happiness for that day. So my mother’s creole, so I grew up cooking shrimp etouffee and gambo and red beans in rice and shrimp creole and things like that. And seeing the direct expressions on their face and reaction after we did this small little transaction, that’s when I felt like I was on my way.

SREENIVASAN: And so, by the end of that trip, you’re thinking to yourself, I can do this, and you want to come back to New York City, you want to go to school and you don’t have the money.

ONWUACHI: Mm-hmm.

SREENIVASAN: So you’re hustling candy on the subway. And a lot of people that are watching this might never have been in a New York City subway but you see these folks going through all the time with their stories. What was your story? What was your pitch?

ONWUACHI: So my spiel was, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, sorry to bother you, I am selling candy in order to start a catering Company and payoff my student loans.

SREENIVASAN: That’s unique enough where you’re like what, that’s strange.

ONWUACHI: Yes. And then I had like 15 different items and I would say all of them and like people would be laughing because they would think it’s over. I would have a pause. And then be like and I have butters and nuts, some roasted peanuts, and roasted cashews and gum and then people would be laughing.

SREENIVASAN: And the hustle worked?

ONWUACHI: It did, it did.

SREENIVASAN: How much did you make off the candy?

ONWUACHI: I saved up about 20 grand.

SREENIVASAN: That’s huge —

ONWUACHI: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: — off candy sales.

ONWUACHI: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: I mean so how long did that take you?

ONWUACHI: Two months.

SREENIVASAN: You also say that this was also a time when you asked both of your parents for support. Your mom, you say, gave you everything she had. And you had a conversation, what you say is one of your last conversations with your dad and you describe abuse in that relationship.

ONWUACHI: You know, he just wasn’t willing to let me forget my past and what I had to do, whether it was selling drugs and, you know, pretty much suggested that I do that again if I wanted to go to school.

SREENIVASAN: Instead of getting money from him, why don’t you go back to selling drugs?

ONWUACHI: Mm-hmm.

SREENIVASAN: You described this in a paragraph that I want to read. It said one of the heaviest burdens of walking through life with the scars of abuse is loving your abuser, respecting then, trusting them, because if you do, it means you deserve their scorn, their blows, their insults. But when I left that day, I took with me a check for 200 bucks and a set of car keys and that’s it. He cut you down verbally, psychologically, beat you down physically. Where did Kwame find the center to get through that?

ONWUACHI: I think my relationship with my mother was very, very integral in me moving forward. She gave — she would shower me with love and understanding, even though I was a really tough kid to deal with. When she was raising me, it was hard, because she was always teetering on the line of trying to discipline me without let me lose my will because I always had a strong will. So having her kind of like guiding me through life and trying to teach me lessons at the same time was very integral to me moving past that and not really thinking that was me and who I was.

SREENIVASAN: So you get through the CIA, the central — not the other — the other CIA, the Culinary Institute, which is prestigious in itself. And you are in the pressure cooker world of the high-end kitchens in New York City. When you look around, even whether it’s through your education or the high- end restaurants that you worked, did you see a lot of other people of color working?

ONWUACHI: No, not at all.

SREENIVASAN: What was the dynamic in those places? Because in the book, you end up calling out a couple of people and pointing to instances where you felt that it mattered?

ONWUACHI: Yes. I mean the dynamic was uncomfortable. It was — the dynamic was not welcoming in some aspects. And a large part of that is because there wasn’t anybody around that looked like me. The biggest example that I have is the stuff that goes unsaid. It’s easy to call somebody a name, the n-word or something out of line, because that can get blown up and someone can lose their job. But the stuff that goes unsaid, the looks that happen, the continuing being passed upon in your station or someone being promoted over you constantly and constantly, that’s the most detrimental form of racism in any single organization.

SREENIVASAN: There’s a recent “Times” article that looked at 16 black chefs in America and how you’re influencing cuisine. And one of the things that came up and I wonder if this happened to you is when you’re out there talking to diners, they’re saying, let me talk to the chef, kind of looking right through you. Has that ever happened? Because you’re kind of famous now?

ONWUACHI: For me, people come to the restaurant to —

SREENIVASAN: Right.

ONWUACHI: — eat my food, so it’s a little different in the dining room. But it’s funny, the contractors and purveyors that work through the back door and they’re like, “Where’s the chef, I need somebody to sign this?” And they’re asking me to go get the chef or they look at the only white server and ask him to sign something. I wrote an article about it in “Food & Wine” and it happens all the time. I don’t think about it anymore. I usually just don’t even bother with it but it used to get under my skin.

SREENIVASAN: And then what about the environment that you’re trying to create in the kitchen, at the intercontinental Kith and Kin? This is now you’re now the boss. You’re deciding who to hire. So what are the things that you’re looking for?

ONWUACHI: I look for character. I look for someone that’s a good person over a resume. Because I can teach you how to sear a steak. I can teach you how to fillet a fish but teaching you how to care, teaching you to want to do the right thing when nobody is watching is really, really hard. So I try to teach people who come in with that attitude that want the place to be successful, that have a goal. And that’s my main focal point. Now, I have a lot of chefs of color and women that gravitate towards me because I think it’s a safe space and because I look like them. They have someone that they can see, something that they can aspire to be and it’s attainable. It’s right there in front of them. So it’s a really cool dynamic. I haven’t seen a restaurant, a fine dining restaurant with that much diversity in the dining room and in the kitchen.

SREENIVASAN: And you want these people to go off and be chefs elsewhere?

ONWUACHI: Absolutely.

SREENIVASAN: You’ve picked up the James Beard Rising Chef Award, which is great. You’ve expanded not just the restaurant you’re working in, but you’ve got your own kind of passion project you’re launching. What kind of restaurant is that?

ONWUACHI: It’s a Philly cheesesteak restaurant. So we do Philly cheesesteaks, chicken wings and waffle fries. We also have a mushroom version, chicken version, and Brussel sprouts as well.

SREENIVASAN: And that’s not what you can get at the intercontinental the Kith and Kin, just a little bit of a fancier experience.

ONWUACHI: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: Right? So is this — is that part of like saying, this is what I really would want to eat if I just went out on a Saturday night versus the fancy stuff here?

ONWUACHI: Well, I want to eat both. I mean I think the food is refined but it’s also the food of my people. So it’s like it’s fancy for people who don’t really know it, but people that grew up eating it, it’s just like jerk chicken. I think I eat jerk chicken every day, at least a small piece of it. But I’ve always wanted to do this Philly link fry project, so when I got an opportunity to do it, I just did it.

SREENIVASAN: Kwame Onwuachi, thank you so much for joining us.

ONWUACHI: Thank you.