![]() ![]() He prepared buljol, a traditional dish from the island. Onwuachi’s grandfather Winston is Trinidadian. Gumbo requires more steps than some other dishes, and it takes time. While Onwuachi has gussied up gumbo for private dinners in the past, even adding caviar beads that burst in your mouth, he’ll put his mother’s more traditional gumbo on the menu at Kith and Kin once his restaurant gets its sea legs. “It’s a place where they say gumbo was born,” Robinson says. Her mother, Cassie, is from Mamou, Louisiana. “I grew up with gumbo with sausage, chicken, crabmeat, crab, and shrimp,” she says. Some make chicken and sausage gumbo or seafood gumbo, but Robinson combines them. I was like, ‘Dude, we’re in New Orleans, I’m going to D.C., and I have to make gumbo.’” “They tested that roux four times,” she says. Security stopped her for additional screening. Onwuachi calls it “black gold.” Robinson brought a sheet pan of it with her from New Orleans. Roux, a mixture of flour and butter cooked into a paste, is used to thicken sauces. My mother used to make this growing up all the time. “This is the shit right here,” Onwuachi says. The biggest pot contained Robinson’s gumbo, dark, murky, and still bubbling. Each relative contributed to the rainbow-colored spread. The chef’s mother, Jewel Robinson, was up from New Orleans and his grandparents Cassie and Winston Phillips drove from Yorktown, Virginia. They say to know someone is to know their family, so earlier this month, City Paper joined Onwuachi for a late lunch at the Navy Yard apartment he shares with his fiancée, Mya Allen. For Onwuachi, research called for traveling down memory lane. ![]() They might take a trip to immerse themselves in the cultures whose cuisines they hope to emulate or perhaps they study old recipe books. Most chefs embark on a period of research and development when opening a restaurant. With his new restaurant, the 27-year-old chef will leverage his greatest asset-his family’s rich history and culinary traditions. It featured luxe dishes like king crab roasted in garlic butter with uni bottarga but garnered unfavorable reviews from critics. ![]() The tasting menu was one of the city’s most expensive, costing $185 before tax, tip, and drinks. The first, The Shaw Bijou, closed three months after opening earlier this year. Kith and Kin is Onwuachi’s second restaurant in D.C. I made beef patties with yellow pepper hot sauce and José Andrés was drinking the sauce.” After that, he says, people implored him to “cook like this all the time.” At first he thought he would stick to new American cuisine. “When the InterContinental first contacted me to do this hotel, I didn’t know what direction to go in,” Onwuachi says. That’s what he’ll do at Kith and Kin, which translates to friends and family in Old English. I just want to cook the food I cook for my family and my friends.” “I grew up eating jollof rice and jambalaya. “My family has a direct lineage of the Afro-Caribbean and transatlantic slave trade where it started in West Africa, went down to the Caribbean, and all the way to the American South,” Onwuachi says. West Africans, who came to the South as slaves, brought their recipes with them and they evolved over time. It inspired many of the rice-based dishes in Creole cuisine, including jambalaya. If you’ve never tried jollof rice, you’ve probably had one of its cousins. While Onwuachi calls the base of his jollof rice “pretty textbook,” the garnishes make the time-honored dish fancy enough to appear on the menu in his refined dining room inside the InterContinental Washington D.C.-The Wharf hotel, set to open on Oct. Spring onion confit, pickled pearl onion petals, and marinated tomatoes all add tartness and tang. He also adds whipped ricotta for a cooling effect. Onwuachi, who lived in Nigeria between the ages of 10 and 12, fuses the techniques by cooking the rice with the seasoning, then piping a few dots of the piquant paste onto the finished dish to ensure diners continue to taste the explosive flavor. Nigerians fold the sauce in after the rice is cooked, while Ghanaians add the paste in from the start, cooking it more like paella. “There’s a running debate between Nigerians and Ghanaians about who makes it the best,” Onwuachi says. Onwuachi cooks down tomato sauce with shrimp powder, habanero pepper, ginger, garlic, red onion, and red pepper to make a paste that turns the rice the vibrant shade of a harvest moon. To understand what Chef Kwame Onwuachi is bringing to the table at his new restaurant Kith and Kin, consider his rendition of West African jollof rice. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Fall Arts Guide 2023! Open dropdown menu. ![]()
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