Photo by: Felicia Perretti

Felicia Perretti

Kwame Onwuachi is the James Beard Award-winning executive chef at Kith/Kin, Esquire Magazine’s Chef of the Year, and author of Notes from a Young Black Chef, published by Alfred A. Knopf. He was born on Long Island and raised in New York City, Nigeria, and Louisiana. Onwuachi was first exposed to cooking by his mother, in the family’s modest Bronx apartment, and he took that spark of passion and turned it into a career. From toiling in the bowels of oil cleanup ships to working at some of the best restaurants in the world, he has seen and lived his fair share of diversity. Onwuachi trained at the Culinary Institute of America and has opened five restaurants before turning thirty. A former Top Chef contestant, he has been named one of Food & Wine‘s Best New Chefs and a 30 Under 30 honoree by both Zagat and Forbes.