By Tim Carman Tim Carman Reporter focusing on national food issues; critic covering affordable and under-the-radar restaurants in the D.C. area.
If “Letters to a Young Chef” provides a sober perspective of what lies ahead for chefs, “Notes From a Young Black Chef” looks back on the difficult path that one tough kid from the Bronx took to reach his goal: becoming a chef in charge of a fine-dining restaurant, Kith and Kin inside the InterContinental at the Wharf, which has earned him the respect of critics and a new James Beard Award nomination for Rising Star Chef of the Year.
“My father beat me on my arms until the braided leather lacerated the skin,” Onwuachi writes. “Once he beat me so hard, the whip broke, and he made me repair it with duct tape.” The general outline of Onwuachi’s life has been reported by countless publications, including this one. The chef has been telling his story in broad strokes even before he opened Shaw Bijou, his much-hyped tasting-menu restaurant that cratered in a matter of months, the result of naivete and underfinancing. There’s Onwuachi, the son who first learned to cook from his mother. There’s Onwuachi, the teenager who sold candy on the subway to fund his catering company.
Looking dope
No thanks
Why not write an article about how white people literally built the world that we live in, providing opportunity to non-white people that they wouldn’t have otherwise? NoHateJustTruth
Just amazing. There are black chefs?
What does skin color have anything to do with anything if I wrote a cool book saying young white blah blah blah would I get an entire article