Met Gala 2025: How the Young Black Chef Kwame Onwuachi went from selling drugs to serving stars

Started from the Gangs, now he is the Star!


If one asks to summarise the journey of Kwame Onwuachi , this could be one of the one-liners among a few more – that are equally as intriguing as the Young Black Chef himself is.

The one who grew up in the Bronx, at present is reigning at the Lincoln Center, in NYC, and now is all set to cater at the most prestigious event of the year – the Met Gala.


Rags-to-Riches!

Growing up in the Bronx, Kwame, as he admits himself, was a ‘class-clown’ who always got in trouble! To mend his ways, he was sent to Nigeria, to his grandfather, until ‘he learnt respect’. In Nigeria, as Kwame recounts, the punishment for not doing homework was carrying a cinder block across a soccer field eight times. There was no concept of suspensions like American schools have; rather, you had to dig your own height.


That ‘hard mold’ brought Kwame up and shaped his teenage days. He learnt the value of discipline the hard way and got his act together.

However, it all changed when he came back to New York.

In college, Kwame had nothing but $20 in his pocket. There was barely any money to even eat, let alone the money for the tuition fee. So he started hustling.

From mixing punches and making ‘hood cocktail’ to procuring weed – Kwame did it all to survive. For the time being, he didn’t have to worry about money for food.

But then the switch flipped!

As Kwame recalls, seeing Barack Obama in the highest office in the US brought him back to his senses. Not only did he flush all the hard drugs down the toilet, but got back in the kitchen to make a simple but aromatic chicken curry!


The rise of the ‘Young Black Chef’:

As the reawakening sent Kwame to seek out his purpose in life, he set out on what he was meant to do – working in the kitchen of restaurants.


However, his goal was to create a catering company.

But where’s the investment for that?

So Kwame quit his job in the restaurant and sold candies in the subway and on trains. After three months of hustling and selling snickers, skittles, nutter butters, oreos and what not – he opened up his catering company!

When the catering company was raking up numbers and money, Kwame decided to go to the Culinary Institute of America. From there began the journey of Chef Kwame Onwuachi in the world of fine dining.

Staging at the Eleven Madison Park, hardship wasn’t unfamiliar to Kwame. Despite the enormous hard work he put in, Kwame missed out on recognition and promotions because of one thing – he was black.

But Kwame held on, and he persevered.

While still working at Eleven Madison Park, Kwame took part in a dinner at the supper club called Dinner Lab with his friend. Not so unsurprisingly, from there on, he started ‘From candy bars to Michelin stars’ on his own, where he began telling his own story through food.

The series of pop-up dinners around the country started, and Kwame signed up for the deal – the chef with the highest score will win their own restaurant!


The series of setbacks:

Winning that chance deal was easy enough for Kwame, but having a successful restaurant wasn’t.

Kwame’s tryst with a restaurant in Washington, DC shattered with ‘Shaw Bijou’ getting a ‘soul-crushing’ review from a well-known food critic at The Washington Post.


Kwame’s next attempt at ‘Kith and Kin’ didn’t come until his mother and sister surrounded him and pulled him out of the alcohol and drug-induced slumber he put himself in after the failure of ‘Shaw Bijou’. At ‘Kith and Kin’, Kwame started fresh with a singular and literal approach – feeding his friends and family (as the name suggests).

However, ‘Kith and Kin’ fell prey to the same food critic, and just when it was ‘light’s out’ for Kwame, he flipped the menu and turned it around with African and Caribbean food.

Kwame’s efforts shone bright, and ‘Kith and Kin’ passed the re-review with flying colours!

However, the color of Kwame’s skin came in the way once again. His book, ‘Notes from a Young Black Chef’, was barred from being promoted at his own restaurant.

Cut to a few months, Kwame was asked to come back with his book in the wake of the ‘ Black Lives Matter ’ movement, and as he recalls, the same management wanted him to do a book-signing event to promote his book.

Kwame did what he had to – ditched the money, kept his morals, and walked away.


The era of Tatiana :

After the ‘Kith and Kin’ episode, Kwame moved back to New York, and one fine day, he received a call from the Lincoln Center as they were renovating the David Geffen Hall.

What’s really missing from the Lincoln Center? There’s the Juilliard School, there’s the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The only missing element was food.


Kwame saw the opportunity and took it in his stride.

Tatiana – named after Kwame’s elder sister, who raised him in their mother’s absence – was born!

Since Tatiana, there was no looking back for Kwame.

Since opening in 2022, Tatiana has unanimously become the centre of attraction at the Lincoln Center. The hip-hop music and the R&B ambience of the restaurant have become the talking point, as a wide range of delicacies on the food menu has made it one of the top restaurants in NYC. The USP of Tatiana? It’s audacious, it’s raucous, it’s inclusive. As Kwame says, there’s room for both durags and tuxedos! And the icing on the top? It pays homage to the multicultural New York with culinary exuberance!


Stepping up at the Met:

For the biggest night in the world of fashion parades, the Met Gala, Kwame has been bestowed with the responsibility of curating the menu this year.


Chef Onwuachi of Tatiana had shared his excitement regarding the project while saying, "I am thrilled and honored to be creating the dining experience for this year's Met Gala. As a chef who grew up in the Bronx, being a part of such an iconic New York institution for the most celebrated, star-studded night of the year is like a professional dream come true.”

This year’s theme for the Gala is “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”

This theme aims to highlight the concept of Black dandyism , drawing inspiration from the work of Monica Miller, a professor and chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College, and her book ‘Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity’.

Keeping up with the essence of this year’s theme, Kwame shared, "As a lover of high fashion, collaborating on the theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style , brings a whole new level of inspiration for me and my team to work with."

What can the guests expect on the menu this year?

As Kwame said, “I want to really capture Black culture in all of its elements—from the diaspora to the Caribbean to the American South, even to just the boroughs in New York.”