Brina's Reviews > Notes from a Young Black Chef

Cooking has always been a passion of mine, so when my co-moderator at the nonfiction book club mentioned that she wanted to read a new memoir by an up and coming top chef, I decided to join her. Notes From a Young Black Chef came at a good time for me as this year celebrity memoirs have become my go-to genre in between denser reads. Reading this story that is dubbed as rags-to-riches but is a really one of a person of color breaking through a glass ceiling in his field, one can not help but be captivated by Kwame Onwuachi’s life.

Kwame Onwuachi was born in November 1989 in the Bronx, New York to parents Patrick and Jewel. What was supposed to be two souls passing in the night became a forced marriage of two distinct people and cultures. Jewel hailed from Louisiana by way of Texas and always enjoyed cooking. Her food held the distinct flavors of creole, Cajun, Deep South, and a melding of spices. Learning from her mother Cassie and stepfather Winston, Jewel Robinson thrived in the kitchen and became an executive caterer. Although low on money in between jobs, her cooking was a labor of love and she passed this on to her children Tatiana and Kwame, who both helped her with catering jobs from early ages. Kwame eventually became a top chef, yet Tatiana prepares award winning cheese cake, always a winner in my book. It is through women that Kwame learned to put his soul into his food preparation, and this has remained true through his short life.

Although Kwame’s parents divorced when he was young and his father was abusive, he learned about his ancestry through his father’s Nigerian roots. When his mother believed that life on the New York streets was becoming to tough for Kwame, she sent him to live with his grandparents in Ibusa, Nigeria. It is there that Kwame learned about efusi stew and the origins of his ancestry. His grandfather is a scholar of the Pan-African movement who obtained a PhD from American universities but chose to return to his roots. Running a compound in a rural community, he showed Kwame among other things how to sacrifice a chicken to the ancestors and to show them respect. It is this lesson that he brought more than anything else upon his return to the United States.

After a series of bad breaks, Jewel moved her catering business to New Orleans and Kwame decided to follow in her footsteps. People of color comprise a sliver of prominent chefs in the United States and a series of chance meetings landed Kwame catering jobs and a slot in the Culinary Institute Of America. I thought I cooked gourmet style until I read the descriptions of the school and the high end kitchens where Kwame worked. Each meal is a production and a work of art requiring a team of 10-20 dedicated chefs. Despite finding few mentors who look like him in top kitchens, Kwame has landed positions in the upper echelons of New York restaurants. There, he was met with the same racial slurs and silent abuses that he faced while working at a barbecue joint in Louisiana. Sadly, other than distinctly ethnic restaurants, few chefs of color are in the position to mentor up and coming cooks like Kwame and his ideas appear to be cutting edge. He, to his credit, has not let the racist remarks push out of the industry, and at the time of publication, has opened five high end restaurants and been named to a who’s who of Americans under age 30.

Notes From a Young Black Chef are full of anecdotes of perseverance and recipes. I would have preferred more in depth writing and found out what Kwame is doing now rather than reading about his current profession on the back jacket cover. Then again, not every book can be a literary masterpiece. I did enjoy reading about the workings of Culinary Institute and of high end restaurants. People are always telling me to open a restaurant and I can use this as proof that is a lot of work. Yet, Kwame has prevailed and finding his own space among top chefs. It will be intriguing to see where he is in ten years and if he has carved a space among the best of the best American chefs.

3.5 stars