Notes from a Young Black Chef

Onwuachi’s grandmother had left her home in Louisiana to move to Chicago to escape the weight of Jim Crow, but Onwuachi made a reverse journey, joining his mother in Baton Rouge where she worked as an executive chef. Like his grandmother, Onwuachi was looking for a new start. Onwuachi had never had difficulty moving between social classes and diverse groups of people, but the South offered unique challenges. Everywhere he went, he saw Black individuals being treated as if they were invisible.

After arriving in Louisiana, Onwuachi spent weeks on the couch, and Jewel pressured her son to find a job. Onwuachi moved in and out of menial jobs. He found work as a server at a restaurant called TJ’s Ribs. He soon discovered that the restaurant practiced an unspoken form of segregation; Onwuachi served the Black customers in one corner of the restaurant. All the other servers were white, and all the cooks were Black. The managers yelled and demeaned the cooks, and Onwuachi felt a line separating him from the men in the kitchen. Working at TJ’s Ribs separated Onwuachi from his love of cooking. Relief came when Jewel found a job in New Orleans. Onwuachi quit his job as a server to join his mother.