8/27/2023 0 Comments Shaw bijou chefNick Stefanelli opened Masseria in the buzzy NoMa neighborhood the slick Italian restaurant offers only three-, four-, and five-course prix fixe menus. There's been a definite resurgence just within the past year alone. Both tasting menus (set courses, often with added serving theatrics) and prix fixe menus (set courses, but with some choices within them) are more popular than ever today in D.C., especially inside new restaurants. in 2011) have since had to close, unable to sustain the concept.īertrand Chemel from 2941 Īnd yet, this hasn't stopped new tasting menu-centric restaurants from continuing to debut in Washington. restaurant to experience such a drop, and some never recovered - over the past few years, such restaurants as Rogue 24 and Eola (two ambitious tasting menu restaurants that had opened in D.C. Then that number dropped to under 10 percent. Before the downturn, 50 percent of 2941's sales were from tasting menus. "Businessmen had two or three hours for lunch before, and now they don't have that," Chemel remembered. It all started during the economic downturn of 2008. One of the first things to go? The emphasis on tasting menus. "We had a slow decline and we needed to react," the chef says. The loss of revenue was so dramatic that chef Bertrand Chemel and his team closed for a few weeks to regroup. The Falls Church restaurant had been a longtime destination for both business lunches and special occasion dinners, and tasting menus were core to its business. “Today, they still mean one thing to me: home.Fine dining destination 2941 was suddenly bringing in much less money in 2011 than it had in previous years. “I didn't know what the trinity was-the onion, celery, and pepper that form the base of so much Creole food-but I could taste the trinity in it,” Onwuachi shares in his article “In Her Footsteps: Louisiana and Texas,” a part of his three-part video series, Tasting Home. Before any of these accomplishments, before fame and before he was a chef at all, Onwuachi was a child in his mother’s kitchen in the Bronx, NY, watching her create dishes for her catering company and tasting the food of her culture–food he would one day recreate himself. Before there was Shaw Bijou, there was season 13 of Top Chef, on which he was a contestant. Before there was Kith/Kin, there was Shaw Bijou, which served a 13-course tasting menu. “I borrow from all the time, so I want to make sure that I’m honoring them and making sure that they also are enjoying the fruits of my labor, because without them, I wouldn’t be here.” Onwuachi is devoted to both the art of preparing a dish and the practice of investing time and resources in his community, working to mentor young chefs, support mentorship programs and institutions, and to ensure “kids don’t go hungry.” In all that he does, he is always intent to pay homage to those who came before him. “Something that profits off of Black and brown dollars,” he says, “should be Black-owned.” Onwuachi left Kith/Kin in 2020, however, in pursuit of creating a restaurant he himself owns. Kith/Kin, the Afro-Caribbean restaurant he opened in D.C.’s InterContinental Hotel in 2017, serving Afro-Caribbean cuisine, is the story of his familial roots in Louisiana, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Nigeria. And I think it's important to tell that story … that’s why I opened Kith/Kin, to tell the story of my ancestors in a way that hasn’t been done before. my family’s history from West Africa, the Caribbean, the American South that really tells the story of how we were spread across the world. His food bridges diaspora by bringing together ingredients and dishes from his respective cultures and histories. Beyond the page, the dishes he creates tell you his name and where he came from, about his family and their traditions. Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s brilliant and telling memoir “Notes from a Young Black Chef” is evidence of his being a storyteller.
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