FOR YEARS NOW, PIERRE THIAM HAS BEEN patiently waiting for everyone else to catch up with him.
You can look at that in a variety of ways. There is, first of all, the unstoppable engine of his enterprise. In recent years, he has published four cookbooks, opened two of his Teranga restaurants in New York City, developed an array of food products with a company called Yolélé, and collaborated with Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver on a series of wildly popular beers that incorporate African ingredients. Trim and scholarly and unfailingly polite, with a demeanor that calls to mind a university professor more than a chef, Thiam has arguably, over the past two decades, done more than anyone else in the United States to raise awareness of the culinary traditions of Senegal, where he was born, as well as the rest of the African continent—helping to clear a pathway for authors and chefs such as Yewande Komolafe of and Serigne Mbaye of Dakar NOLA in
