THE SUCCESS ISSUE
Kwame Onwuachi will be the first to tell you that he was a terrible barista. He could never get the latte art right when he manned the espresso machine at Craft, Tom Colicchio's flagship Manhattan restaurant, in 2010. But as staff trickle into Tatiana, the glitzy restaurant he opened in Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall in November, he expertly pulls an espresso-though he doesn't bother to foam the milk, having yet to master the technique of drawing pretty designs in it.
Onwuachi has overcome far more consequential failures in his 33 years than messing up a cup of coffee. He had a drug problem as a youth, and his first, much-anticipated restaurant was a huge washout. But just a few years later, he has bounced back to become one of the most acclaimed chefs in the country.
Tatiana has landed on a swath of best-new-restaurant lists (including in this magazine), and in April food critic Pete Wells ranked it No. 1 on his 100 Best Restaurants in New York City. It would be disingenuous, though, to suggest that Onwuachi has been an overnight sensation. He made a big impression as a contestant on ’s 13th season in 2015 and did a stint as a judge on the Bravo show a few was a bestseller and is currently being made into a movie, and he finished writing a cookbook, during the pandemic. Speaking of which, when Covid brought the restaurant industry to its knees, he took a nearly yearlong private-chef gig with Rihanna, established the Kwame Onwuachi Scholarship Fund at the Culinary Institute of America (his alma mater), and negotiated the terms of Tatiana with the Lincoln Center board over Zoom.
