Kwame Onwuachi's memoir, Notes from a Young Black Chef, weaves the threads of food, culture, identity, nation, race and family to offer a coming-of-age story that resists a linear path in favor of dream chasing, failing, and rebuilding. The text offers contemporary pop-culture references drawn into historical conversations of migration, civil rights, and liberation, along with recipes that mark major turns in Onwuachi's life.
Onwuachi is now a celebrated chef, made famous as a Top Chef contestant and the owner of Tatiana's in NYC. His memoir speaks to all the ways this success was built on a trail of movement across geographies, communities, and people, and remembered through the food that was imagined, passed down, and shared.
| Standing on Stories | Personal history; National history; Cooking tells a story; Flavors as language; Tracing back the history of gumbo |
| Egusi Stew | Nigerian food culture; Southern food culture; Migration; Second great migration (U.S. History); Memory and perspective; Pan Africanism; African Liberation Movement; Food scarcity; Model for Entrepreneurship |
| Dominoes | History of New Orleans; LA; Hierarchy of public school, chapters and magnet campuses; Implicit bias in schools; Belonging |
| Ancestors | Grandfather's history; Life in Ibusa, Nigeria; Belonging; Comparison of school cultures in Nigeria to the Bronx; Double Consciousness; Emphasis on space and home; Respect |
| The Block | Gang violence and community; Hostile spaces; Substance abuse; College failures; Belonging; Braving change |
| Gulf State | Move to Louisiana; Cook on the Maine Responder; Self-advocacy; Food as care; Cooking for community; Class, race and implicit bias |
| Finding My Craft | "The candy racket"; Entrepreneurship; Fine dining experience; Reading kitchen culture; Finding opportunity |
| CIA Man | History of Culinary Institute of America; Costs of Education; Confronting past mistakes |
| Blood on the Eggshells | Externships; Kitchen hierarchy; Racism and fine dining; Hostile work environment; Belonging |
| From Old Guard to Start-up | Racism; Class and race in fine dining; Food and identity; Authenticity; Self-advocacy; Dinner lab |
| Angles | Top Chef experience; TV representation; Building a brand |
| The Jewel | Starting a business, opening Shaw Bijou; Building and leading a team; Restaurant reviews and navigating challenges; Restaurant closing |
| The Lesson | Reflection; Representation in fine dining; Stereotyped expectations for cuisine; Authenticity; Defining Success; Resilience |