Most chefs prefer to sit down and talk about their upcoming restaurant in the same space. But Kwame Onwuachi isn’t most chefs. Instead, the national culinary icon insisted on talking as he walked while playing a few rounds at D.C.’s East Potomac Public Golf Course last week. During his 5 p.m. tee time, the The best chef The star told Eater all about his Return to DC’s Southwest Coast food scene anticipated in September.
In his new Afro-Caribbean restaurant Dogon (pronounced “Doh-gon”), which opens at the foot of the 373-room building. Salamander Washington DC On Monday, September 9, Onwuachi pays homage to legendary DC land surveyor Benjamin Banneker and his ancestral ties to the Dogon tribe. Onwuachi’s menu explores both his own Nigerian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Creole heritage and DC’s melting pot of cultures through a “West African lens.”
“Everything is meant to be shared,” Onwuachi says. “I get inspiration from everything from Korean to Ethiopian food. [cuisines].”
While Dōgon isn’t typically open on Mondays, September 9 marks the date that D.C. was formally named in 1791. The gold chain curtains surrounding the impressive 200-seat dining room reference the mathematical device Banneker used to lay out the city’s lines (1330 Maryland Avenue SW).
Onwuachi is best known locally for his time at the long-closed Wharf InterContinental. Relatives/Relativesand Dōgon marks the celebrity chef and author’s second act inside an elegant hotel on the banks of the scenic Potomac River.
“It’s very exciting to be back,” he admits, sporting Dogon’s new black and gold cap on the pitch. “There are a lot of memories here, good and bad, but at the same time there’s a feeling of coming home, similar to when I returned to New York.”
He returned to his New York roots in 2022 with the blockbuster debut of Tatiana, a luxurious ode to the Bronx takeout of his youth. Long wait lists and Acknowledgements quickly occurred, with The New York Times Restaurant critic Pete Wells puts a touch of class on the hit Lincoln Center attraction. Three star review — and the number 1 title of the The best restaurant in New York.
It was during his break in DC that he also fell in love with golf; ever since his actor friend Adrian Homles, who plays Uncle Phil on the modern Peacock TV series, Bel Air— When I took him to his first driving range, he was hooked. “It’s so serene, you’re in nature and you can’t be on your phone,” he says. Between puffs and drags of his “fucking good” $5 half-smoked tobacco cigarette from the course’s Potomac Grille cafe, he adds, “This is the first time I’ve ever gotten a work-life balance.”
The night before, he had gotten his first look at Dōgon’s full menu during a private tasting with Salamander CEO Sheila Johnson. The duo’s fourth annual family reunion is taking place this weekend at Salamander Middleburg, where 40 of his chef friends (plus surprise musicians) gather to celebrate diversity in the hospitality industry. He reveals that he met the billionaire businesswoman six years ago “very casually,” after giving a speech at a wedding convention in the Bahamas. “I was very blunt and swearing myself,” he recalls. “She was the only person who stood up at the end and said, ‘You’re real. I like you. ’”
Maybe it’s his newfound outdoor hobby, or simply the culinary confidence that comes with more years in the kitchen, but the 34-year-old chef seems completely at ease and in control as he takes on his next big project. After his first D.C. restaurant, Shaw Bijou, promptly failed in 2016, the pressure was on Kith/Kin to deliver at the Wharf (which he did, of course, earning him the award for best-selling restaurant in the world). 2019 James Beard Award for Emerging Chef and critical acclaim for its refined approach to jollof rice, oxtails and goat curry).
“I feel more mature and not as obsessed with this, unlike the last time I was in the public eye. I was still a kid,” he says, about opening his first restaurant at age 26. “This one is super special to me.”
He’s assembled a dream team of talent to debut at Dōgon, including his former Kith/Kin chef Martel Stone and beverage director Derek Brown, the pioneering DC mixologist who founded Columbia Room.
Dōgon’s vision predates Tatiana, going back four years, when she was researching the vast impact Banneker had had on the nation’s capital. “I thought, ‘This is incredible.’ This black man was hired by George Washington. How good did he have to be at his job to get hired back then, at the beginning of time?”
Banneker, a largely self-taught mathematician, astronomer and urban planner, turned to the starry night sky as a geographical guide.
“DC wouldn’t even have a capital without West African science as we know it today. Why not tell the story? Every dish is inspired by it,” he says.
As for what Dōgon’s fate will be, he always leaves that up to the guests; he didn’t anticipate that Tatiana’s big hits would be her tender short rib pastrami or the “cellar special” with a Cosmic Brownie. (As it turns out, no one ended up ordering her expected signature dish: a hot pocket.)
“Honestly, I just try to cook good food; that’s always my goal,” he says.
Surrounded by waving willows, views of DCA planes flying overhead and sounds of geese honking on the 18th hole, his randomly chosen golfing partner for the day finally realized he was playing with a celebrity chef the whole time. “Holy crap, I just Googled you,” he says. “You’re the answer on today’s show.” Washingtonian crossword.”
To which Onwuachi joked: “I’m just an amateur golfer.”
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