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

August 15, 2024

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

The “H Road” rooster and rice options Ethiopian berbere spices, jollof rice, and herbs.

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 way of a “West African lens.”

“Every part is supposed to be shared,” says Onwuachi. “I’m taking inspiration from all the things from Korean to Ethiopian [cuisines].”

Whereas Dōgon gained’t normally 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 traces (1330 Maryland Avenue SW).

Onwuachi is finest identified regionally for his time on the Wharf InterContinental’s long-closed Kith/Kin, and Dōgon marks the movie star chef and creator’s second act inside a complicated 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 a number of reminiscences right here, good and unhealthy — however there’s a homecoming really feel on the identical time, much 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 shortly ensued, with New York Occasions restaurant critic Pete Wells giving the wildly profitable Lincoln Heart attraction a three-star overview — and No. 1 title of the finest restaurant in New York.

Kith and Kin alum Martel Stone reunites with Kwame Onwuachi as chef de delicacies at Dōgon.

Chef Kwame Onwuachi and D.C. grasp mixologist Derek Brown workforce up for the primary time.

It was throughout his D.C. hiatus when he additionally fell in love with the sport of golf; ever since his actor pal Adrian Homles — who performs Uncle Phil on Peacock’s modern-day TV collection 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 cellphone,” 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 stability.”

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 a good time variety within the hospitality business. He reveals he first met the billionaire businesswoman six years in the past “very randomly,” after delivering a speech at a Bahamas wedding ceremony conference. “I used to be very candidly myself and cursing,” he recollects. “She was the one one that obtained up on the finish, saying ‘You’re actual. I such as you.’”

Possibly it’s his latest outside passion, or just the culinary confidence that comes with extra years within the kitchen, however the 34-year-old chef seems to be absolutely relaxed and in management as he undertakes his subsequent massive undertaking. After his first D.C. restaurant Shaw Bijou famously fizzled quick in 2016, the strain was on to make Kith/Kin ship on the Wharf (it did, in fact, incomes him the 2019 James Beard Award for Rising Chef and important 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.”

Barbecue greens with candied Cipollini onions, roasted garlic and beef bacon.

He’s amassed a dream workforce 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.

“Hoe crab” (plantain hoe cake, shitto “no matter,” aji verde).

Grilled wagyu quick rib with crimson stew jam, “mad” pickles (banchan), and child greens.

The imaginative and prescient for Dōgon predates Tatiana, going again 4 years in the past when he was researching how massive of an impression 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 must be at his job to be employed again then originally 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 actually have a capital with out West African science as we all know it at the moment. So why not inform the story? All of the dishes are impressed by that,” he says.

So far as what Dōgon’s vacation spot will likely 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 attempting to cook dinner some good meals — that’s at all times my objective,” 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 companion of the day lastly realized he was enjoying with a well-known chef the whole time. “Holy shit, I simply Googled you,” he says. “You’re the reply on at the moment’s Washingtonian crossword puzzle.”

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