I love memoirs on audio and this was a good one in that format. Thank you to Random House Children’s Books for the review copy!
About the Book
Title: Notes from a Young Black Chef
Author: Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein
Genre: memoir
Pub Date: April 13, 2021
My Reading Format: audiobook
Length: 6 hours 28 minutes
Add on Goodreads here.
Available to purchase on Amazon here.
Blurb
Food was Kwame Onwuachi’s first great love. He connected to cooking via his mother, in the family’s modest Bronx apartment. From that spark, he launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars he made selling candy on the subway and trained in the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country. He faced many challenges on the road to success, including breaking free of a dangerous downward spiral due to temptation and easy money, and grappling with just how unwelcoming the world of fine dining can be for people of color.
Born on Long Island and raised in New York City, Nigeria, and Louisiana, Kwame Onwuachi’s incredible story is one of survival and ingenuity in the face of adversity.
About the Authors
Kwame Onwuachi is a James Beard Award-winning chef, and author of the critically acclaimed cookbook “My America” and memoir “Notes from a Young Black Chef,” which is being turned into a feature film by A24. Kwame has been named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs, Esquire Magazine’s 2019 Chef of the Year, and is a 30 Under 30 honoree by both Zagat and Forbes. He’s also been featured on Time’s 100 Next List and has been named the most important Chef in America by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Kwame appeared as a judge on season 18 of Top Chef in April 2021. He first appeared as a contestant on the show in season 13. He also was the host of the 2021 and 2022 James Beard Awards in Chicago.
Kwame currently serves as Food & Wine’s executive producer. In this newly appointed role, Kwame will collaborate on big brand moments and events, including the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, as well as the creator of “The Family Reunion: Presented by Kwame Onwuachi,” an annual multi-day event taking place in Middleburg, Virginia that celebrates diversity in the hospitality community.
His restaurant concept Tatiana, opened at the Lincoln Center in November 2022. Since its opening, it has had numerous top accolades, including “The #1 Restaurant in New York City,” by the New York Times, “The One to Watch” by World’s 50 Best Restaurants, and La Liste’s “World’s Best Restaurants List.” In the summer of 2024, he will partner with the Salamander DC hotel, to open his newest restaurant concept, Dōgon.
Joshua David Stein is a New York-based journalist, author, food critic, and editor. He graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Arts in Ethnomusicology. He has contributed to such publications as The New York Times, New York Magazine, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, GQ, Esquire, Food & Wine, and others. A prolific author, Stein has numerous published titles to his credit, including children’s books What Can I Eat? (2016) and What’s Cooking? (2017); Il Buco: Stories and Recipes (2020), Vino: The Essential Guide to Italian Wine (2022); and two books with chef Kwame Onwuachi, Notes from a Young Black Chef (2021) and My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef (2022).
Joshua David Stein previously served as the editor-in-chief of Blackbook magazine, features editor at Departures, co-founder and creative director of Stitch at Time magazine, and the editor-at-large at OUT magazine. He was the restaurant critic for the Village Voice and the New York Observer. For two years, Stein was editor-at-large at Fatherly and hosted The Fatherly Podcast. In 2020, the father of two boys published To Me, He Was Just Dad: Stories of Growing Up with Famous Fathers, a collection of personal essays written by the children of actors, authors, inventors, sports heroes, and scientists.
Review
I really enjoyed this book and am so glad I finally got to it. My library got the audiobook for it, which made for a really good experience because the narrator, Malik Rashad, seemed like a great fit.
I liked how the story started out towards the end of where it would eventually be headed. It made for a really good contrast between the author’s beginnings into his culinary adventures and what he would eventually go on to accomplish later on. He said “rags to riches” was too extreme of a description for his life, but the ups and downs were still very distinct from each other and it was interesting to hear about his rise to the top.
Despite getting a glimpse of the ending at the beginning of the book, the actual ending took me really off guard. I didn’t know much about the author at all aside from having seen him on Top Chef so I had no idea what was coming. I don’t want to spoil things for readers that also don’t know so I’ll just say I wish the author good luck in all his future endeavors!
I don’t remember why I decided to request the YA adaptation of the original memoir but I thought it was really well done. I don’t know the differences between this one and the original but found this one very fitting for a YA audience.
The Shaggy Shepherd 
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