46 pages • 1 hour read
Kwame OnwuachiNotes from a Young Black Chef
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Discovery of Identity
Content Warning: This section references emotional and physical child abuse and racism.
In the opening chapter, Kwame Onwuachi describes preparing a meal for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The event organizers request that he construct an African American menu. Onwuachi struggles with this idea. Because he is African American, he considers all the food he creates to be African American food—an idea at odds with the popular concept that African American food is primarily Southern soul food. This event introduces Onwuachi’s lifelong wrestling match with identity, particularly as it relates to cooking. As an aspiring chef, Onwuachi learned that the food industry has a clear image of what it expects from Black chefs and Black food. When Onwuachi served food to a Top Chef producer, the producer similarly told him that American viewers were not ready for a Black chef that did not serve Black—meaning Southern—food. Onwuachi questioned whether he should conform. He wanted a chance to make a name for himself, but while Southern food was a part of his story, it was not the whole story. His personal identity was not that straightforward.
Onwuachi’s recollections of his childhood reveal the complexity of his identity from the start—even (and especially) in terms of food. His family kitchen produced curries, Nigerian dishes, American fare, Southern comfort food, and Creole classics. With his Irish American school friends, he ate bland roasts. In Nigeria, he chowed down on corned beef sandwiches, Scotch eggs, and banga stew. The young chef came from a background of diverse dishes that reflected the eclectic nature of the social circles he moved in. The latter taught him to slip into different versions of himself. As a young man, he could move between “B.A.B.Y. Kwame to bourgeois Kwame with ease” (90). He was a different Kwame with his father than with his mother, with his grandfather than with his sister. He fit in at his school for gifted and talented students while making friends at The Webster Houses, a rough housing project. With each new life experience, he discovered a new Kwame—the one comfortable sharing his story to a room crowded with diners and the exaggerated self that appeared on TV. Onwuachi lived all these identities, as well as many others. His unique background was part of what made him stand out, but it was also a part of what made it difficult to develop his brand in an industry that demanded conformity.
Onwuachi was not always confident in his code switching. He worried that the reason he struggled with spending time alone was because he didn’t know his authentic self—or perhaps even have one. When he first moved to Baton Rouge to stay with his mother, he struggled to find his identity in the South. He knew what it meant to be Black in Nigeria, Harlem, and the Bronx, but he was not sure how to navigate what it meant to be Black in the South. His time working as a cook on a ship taught him a valuable lesson about identity. He learned that food could connect people and blend identities together. Through food, he could offer a narrative that was uniquely his own. Onwuachi discovered that he could be authentic, even within the many identities he inhabited. His diverse background and experiences made him who he was. He had a deeply personal story to tell. He could be the kind of leader who listened and who celebrated and mentored others.
Anger and Power
Onwuachi’s lessons about anger and power came early. After his parents separated, his time with his father was riddled with fear. Patrick was demanding and exacting, exerting power over his son in an effort to mitigate his own pain and brokenness. He held his son to impossible standards and brutally punished him for failing to meet his expectations. The younger Onwuachi lived in fear of angering his father and never knew what would set him off. He internalized his anger toward his father, learning his first lesson about power. In the Bronx, Onwuachi learned more lessons about power and how it is connected to violence. After getting beaten up, he was told that he must fight an acquaintance who had stood by without assisting him. He learned that he was supposed to be angry and to want to express that anger through violence: Power was something that had to be both defended and exerted through force.
He saw this cycle again in restaurants where he was employed. When he worked as a server, he saw how the manager and owner degraded their employees, especially the Black cooks in the kitchen. At Per Se and Eleven Madison Park, he again encountered chefs who believed it was their duty to terrorize the kitchen. When Onwuachi tried to quit his job at Eleven Madison Park, the chef admonished him, explaining that Kwame had not yet been yelled at enough to become a serious chef, as though accepting abuse was a necessary precursor to exercising power oneself. The hierarchical structure of professional kitchens fostered these brutal exertions of power. The chef de cuisine was the godlike presence in the kitchen; everyone listened to him without question, and chefs like Flint allowed their tempers to dominate the kitchen. However, Flint’s violent exercise of power also planted the seeds of Onwuachi’s resistance. Because of Flint, the Black chefs—including Onwuachi—banded together: “That’s how fear works. It galvanizes and tribalizes you” (208). Onwuachi, who had experience with patriarchal power, was particularly determined not to be cowed. He pushed back when he felt like he could, making a mental note of the type of leader he never wanted to be.
Onwuachi continued to struggle with the violent exercise of anger and power while being arrested for unpaid parking tickets, while telling his father about the arrest, and while challenging a business partner who wanted him to be less political. When Onwuachi was handed the keys to his own restaurant, he was determined to do things differently—to break the cycle of power and aggression. Although his first restaurant closed, Onwuachi did not see the experience as a failure. For Onwuachi, his success lay in the dynamics and culture he cultivated in the kitchen. While he urged his team to work with urgency and precision, he listened and supported them. He felt it was important to amplify their voices by allowing them to add to the menu. Each night he featured a dish from one of the chefs in the kitchen. Still, Onwuachi was not immune to anger. When another Washington, DC, chef questioned Onwuachi, implied he was entitled, and referred to him with a racist jibe, Onwuachi pushed back. He was angry, but this was not anger worthy of shame. Onwuachi learned what it meant to be angry about the right things and to be angry for people rather than at them.
Food as Connection and Story
From an early age, Kwame learned that food was powerful. His mother was a caterer and filled his kitchen with delicious smells. Onwuachi describes how his mother came alive while cooking: “I had never seen my mother as radiantly happy, a happiness that came, I know now, from being complete in her element” (39). He saw how his mother could make rooms of people happy with her cooking and how she could soothe her husband’s anger with a pot of stew. She taught him that there was joy in discovery when it came to food. Once, when Kwame smelled curry in his apartment building, Jewel scoured the building with her son to find the source so they could taste it. She never quarreled when her son filled the kitchen with dirty dishes, recognizing the importance of exploration in cooking. Food was more than fuel. It was a way of connecting to people and memories and a way of telling stories.
While working on the clean-up ship, Onwuachi learned this lesson more deeply. He found that he too had the power to connect people with one another. Serving jambalaya to the crew helped him to build relationships with people that he at first found scary and alien. When he became a professional chef, he learned that he could also connect people to their memories while sharing his own story through food. His dishes were deeply personal, combining ingredients and concepts from his varied background. His cooking put into practice the advice Onwuachi long ago received from his grandfather during his trip to Africa: “You can’t take this land with you, but your ancestors will never leave you. They are part of who you are” (75). When Onwuachi cooked red stew or used Nigerian ingredients such as suya, he felt connected to his ancestors and closer to understanding his identity.
Onwuachi speaks about cooking as a compulsion and a joy that stems from an ancestral connection to food. Often praised for his intelligence and thoughtfulness as a chef, Onwuachi thinks about food as a form of communication. He acknowledges the way food can both uplift and oppress. As he prepares a meal, he recognizes the heritage and complex history of each ingredient. At the end of the memoir, he determines the story he wants to tell, and it is shaped by the kind of protagonist he wants to be. Here, the theme of food aligns with the theme of anger and power. After watching many men wield power through anger and violence, he determines that he does not want to live his life the same way. His story could have been similar to those of the chefs who dominated Onwuachi and others in the kitchen. He could have used his platform to elevate himself while stepping on those beneath him. Instead, the young chef uses food to tell a story of connection. Onwuachi’s story is one that sheds light on discrimination and celebrates diversity. It recognizes that there is no singular African American experience; instead, African American experiences are eclectic and nuanced, and his food matches the narrative.
