Inside Superstar Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s Lengthy-Awaited Return to D.C.

Most cooks desire to sit down down to debate their upcoming restaurant within the house itself. However Kwame Onwuachi isn’t most cooks. As an alternative, the nationwide culinary icon insisted on speaking whereas strolling as he performed a couple of rounds on D.C.’s East Potomac public golf course final week. Over the length of his 5 p.m. tee time, the High Chef star instructed Eater all about his anticipated return to D.C.’s Southwest Waterfront eating scene in September.

Scott Suchman

At his new Afro-Caribbean restaurant Dōgon (pronounced “Doh-gon”), opening on the foot of the 373-room Salamander Washington DC on Monday, September 9, Onwuachi pays homage to D.C.’s legendary land surveyor Benjamin Banneker and his ancestral ties to the Dōgon tribe. Onwuachi’s menu explores each his personal Nigerian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Creole heritage and D.C.’s melting pot of cultures by means of a “West African lens.”

“Every thing is supposed to be shared,” says Onwuachi. “I’m taking inspiration from every thing from Korean to Ethiopian [cuisines].”

Whereas Dōgon gained’t often be open on Mondays, September 9 signifies the date when D.C. was formally named in 1791. Gold chain curtains surrounding the beautiful, 200-seat eating room reference the mathematical machine Banneker used to map out metropolis strains (1330 Maryland Avenue SW).

Onwuachi is finest recognized regionally for his time on the Wharf InterContinental’s long-closed Kith/Kin, and Dōgon marks the superstar chef and writer’s second act inside a fancy resort alongside the scenic Potomac River.

“It’s so emotional to be again,” he admits, whereas sporting Dōgon’s new black-and-gold cap on the course. “There’s numerous reminiscences right here, good and dangerous — however there’s a homecoming really feel on the similar time, just like after I went again to New York.”

He returned to his NY roots in 2022 with the blockbuster opening of Tatiana, a high-end ode to the Bronx carryouts of his youth. Lengthy wait lists and accolades rapidly ensued, with New York Instances restaurant critic Pete Wells giving the wildly profitable Lincoln Middle attraction a three-star evaluate — and No. 1 title of the finest restaurant in New York.

Scott Suchman

Scott Suchman

It was throughout his D.C. hiatus when he additionally fell in love with the sport of golf; ever since his actor good friend Adrian Homles — who performs Uncle Phil on Peacock’s modern-day TV sequence Bel-Air — took him to his first driving vary, he was hooked. “It’s so serene — you’re in nature and may’t be in your telephone,” he says. In between taking swings and bites of his “fucking good” $5 half-smoke from the course’s on-site cafe Potomac Grille, he provides: “That is the primary time I’ve had work-life steadiness.”

The evening earlier than, he previewed Dōgon’s full menu for the primary time throughout a non-public tasting with Salamander CEO Sheila Johnson. The duo’s fourth annual Household Reunion is that this weekend at Salamander Middleburg, the place 40 of his chef associates (plus shock musicians) collect to have fun range within the hospitality trade. He reveals he first met the billionaire businesswoman six years in the past “very randomly,” after delivering a speech at a Bahamas marriage ceremony conference. “I used to be very candidly myself and cursing,” he remembers. “She was the one one who bought up on the finish, saying ‘You’re actual. I such as you.’”

Perhaps it’s his latest out of doors interest, or just the culinary confidence that comes with extra years within the kitchen, however the 34-year-old chef seems to be totally comfy and in management as he undertakes his subsequent large challenge. After his first D.C. restaurant Shaw Bijou famously fizzled quick in 2016, the stress was on to make Kith/Kin ship on the Wharf (it did, after all, incomes him the 2019 James Beard Award for Rising Chef and crucial acclaim for his refined strategy to jollof rice, oxtails, and curried goat).

“I simply really feel extra mature and never so obsessive over it, in contrast to the final time after I was within the public eye. I used to be nonetheless a child rising up,” he says, of opening his first restaurant at age 26. “This one is tremendous particular to me.”

Scott Suchman

He’s amassed a dream group of expertise to debut Dōgon, which incorporates his former Kith/Kin chef Martel Stone and beverage director Derek Brown, the pioneering D.C. mixologist who based Columbia Room.

Scott Suchman

Scott Suchman

Scott Suchman

The imaginative and prescient for Dōgon predates Tatiana, going again 4 years in the past when he was researching how large of an influence Banneker made on the nation’s capital. “I used to be like, ‘that is unimaginable.’ This Black man was employed by George-fucking-Washington — how good did he should be at his job to be employed again then at the start of time?”

Banneker, a largely self-educated mathematician, astronomer, and concrete planner, turned to the starry evening sky as a geographical information.

“D.C. wouldn’t also have a capital with out West African science as we all know it as we speak. So why not inform the story? All of the dishes are impressed by that,” he says.

So far as what Dōgon’s vacation spot can be, he at all times leaves that as much as the friends; he didn’t anticipate Tatiana’s best hits to be its tender quick rib pastrami suya or “bodega particular” that includes a Cosmic Brownie. (Seems, nobody ended up ordering his hopeful signature: a scorching pocket.)

“Actually, I’m simply making an attempt to cook dinner some good meals — that’s at all times my aim,” he says.

Surrounded by swaying willows, views of DCA planes flying in, and sounds of squawking geese on the 18th gap, his randomly-matched golf associate of the day lastly realized he was enjoying with a well-known chef the complete time. “Holy shit, I simply Googled you,” he says. “You’re the reply on as we speak’s Washingtonian crossword puzzle.”

To which, Onwuachi quipped again: “I’m simply an beginner golfer, man.”

Scott Suchman

Scott Suchman