For a while, he had the word “patience” inked on his right forearm, but he had it removed and replaced with an elaborate depiction of the ingredients for gumbo. He wears thick-framed glasses, which give him a slightly nerdy, erudite air, and he’s heavily tattooed. Onwuachi, who is small and a bit boyish (“Booyakasha!,” he hollered, as he bounded down the steps to the basement prep kitchen), favors baseball caps and vividly patterned button-downs. If this made it seem as if he wasn’t actually working in the kitchen, the truth is that he doesn’t usually wear chef’s whites. He was dressed in street clothes, including a do-rag. One of my dinner companions told him that her name was Tatiana, and he insisted that she stand up for a long embrace. The first time I ate at the restaurant, shortly after it opened, Onwuachi made the rounds, checking in with every table. For a dessert called Bodega Special, he makes a “cosmic brownie” (an homage to a Little Debbie product), which is dotted with rainbow-hued chocolate chips and paired with ice cream both flavored and shaped to look like a powdered doughnut. He deep-fries pods of okra until their ridges blister and split-slightly puffed, crisp, and salted, they’re finished with honey and mustard powder, and served with a Trinidadian-style pepper sauce. “Do I remember when I was thirty-three?” Scala wondered aloud.Īt Tatiana, he fills dumplings with crab and egusi, a traditional Nigerian soup made with pungent ground melon seeds. Onwuachi laughed and said, “It is my Jesus year, though! Thirty-three.” “Are you gonna turn this water into wine?” Scala quipped. Someone asked if there shouldn’t be wine, too. Open: pepper steak, hamachi escovitch, black-bean hummus topped with berbere lamb. “It’s not really morning if you don’t sleep,” Onwuachi replied.įor the segment, Onwuachi and a reporter named Lauren Scala were going to sample dishes that he’d be cooking for an event at the U.S. “You’ve had a busy morning!” the camera operator said. Kwame Onwuachi, Tatiana’s chef and proprietor, wouldn’t normally be at the restaurant so early, but he was there to record a television segment for WNBC-his second of the day, after the “Today” show, at half past eight. ![]() ![]() (“I buried the lede,” the publicist said.) The party was for Beyoncé, who had just played a sold-out show at MetLife Stadium, and Jay-Z. on Monday, and the managers hadn’t left until six. The last guests had trickled out at 4 A.M. Someone else mentioned that there had been a private event on Sunday-the one day of the week when the restaurant is usually closed. “Kerry Washington was in last night,” a publicist told me. on a Tuesday in July, but the staff at Tatiana, the restaurant in Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, seemed exhausted.
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