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Dan Pashman: Welcome to the third and final story that you wanted to hear this week as part of our 10th anniversary festivities. This one's in two parts, the second part is also up now also, and the brand new update comes at the end of that second part. And remember that our Instagram Live 10th Anniversary party with Carla Hall and Sohla El-Waylly is Tomorrow night at 9 p.m. eastern. Sohla’s gonna teach me how to make a roux, Carla and I will catch up, and we’ll be raising money for Feeding America. Again tomorrow night at 9 p.m. eastern. Bring a drink and/or a pint of ice cream. Make sure you follow me on Instagram @TheSporkful so you don’t miss it. Okay, on with the show!

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Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful. It’s not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. And we are coming to you live from the Miracle Theater in Washington, D.C. 

[APPLAUSE] 

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Dan Pashman: Thank you. That was very good. That was very good. Joining me tonight is a chef who has become well-known not just for his food, but for his story, which we'll be talking about a lot tonight. He worked his way up through all kinds of kitchens, competed on Top Chef, opened his own place. But it's just in the past six months that things have really exploded for him. He won the James Beard Award for Rising Star Chef of the Year. He made the 30 under 30 lists of both Zagat and Forbes. And his memoir, Notes from a Young Black Chef, is being turned into a movie starring Lakeith Stanfield from Atlanta. Are you kidding me? 

Dan Pashman: Amazing. His restaurants here in D.C. are Kith and Kin and Philly Wing Fry. Please welcome Kwame Onwuachi.  

[APPLAUSE]

Dan Pashman: So feel free to adjust your mic, make sure it's close to your face and all that stuff, you've talked into microphones before. So, Kwame...

Kwame Onwuachi: I used to have a rap career. Did you know that?

Dan Pashman: No!

Kwame Onuwachi: That wasn't in the book. 

Dan Pashman: Tell me about that. Wow. Breaking news. 

Kwame Onuwachi: That’s for the next book.

Dan Pashman: So you really are very comfortable holding a microphone then? 

Kwame Onuwachi: Mm-hmm.

Dan Pashman: Well, maybe later on you’ll rap for us. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Maybe. 

Dan Pashman: All right. We'll see how it goes.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah, yeah. If I get drunk enough tonight. 

Dan Pashman: All right. Well, that's a perfect segue, because, you know, I want to begin at the beginning with your story, Kwame. But before we begin at the beginning, I think a good preamble would be to talk about a drink that I learned about from your book. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Uh-huh. 

Dan Pashman: Called The Nutcracker. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah, those are good.

Dan Pashman: Tell folks who aren’t familiar with it, what's a Nutcracker?

Kwame Onuwachi: So a Nutcracker is a hood concoction of a fruity liquid with a spirit in it. And then we usually, like, bottle it and sell it on the street at night time. So sometimes they sell it on the beach. But it's usually in the summertime, you sell Nutcrackers because everyone's like hanging out outside and it's delicious. And they don't take ID. So it’s great. You know?

Dan Pashman: And one of your many entrepreneurial periods involved selling nutcrackers. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah, yeah, it was good. 

Dan Pashman: So in reading about this, I mean, this to me sounds like a delicious drink. 

Kwame Onuwachi: It's really good, yeah.

Dan Pashman: So I'd like to ask Ngofeen to come out, please. We prepared a special treat here, Kwame.

Kwame Onuwachi: Hell yeah. I may be rapping tonight! Wow. This is great. 

Dan Pashman: Thank you, Ngofeen. So we have rum and we have Hawaiian punch per your instructions, Chef.

Kwame Onuwachi: These are key ingredients in a Nutcracker.

Dan Pashman: I went with a classic red Hawaiian Punch. I hope that you approve.

Kwame Onuwachi: That's all right. That's good. Keep it classic.

Dan Pashman: And I'll let you do the mixology here. 

Kwame Onuwachi: I don’t want you to see my recipe so I’m gonna go around…

Dan Pashman: Well the book...

Kwame Onuwachi: All right. Do you want one?

Dan Pashman: Uh, hello? 

Kwame Onuwachi: I thought this was both for me. What happens if my ice melts?

Dan Pashman: We can get you more ice, buddy. All right. Thank you. Cheers.

Kwame Onuwachi: Cheers! It’s a must. Smells like my childhood. 

Dan Pashman: Oh, that's really good. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: My wife would love these. 

Kwame Onuwachi: And your kid probably, too. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

[LAUGHING]

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Dan Pashman: So let's go back to the beginning. You grew up, at least your early childhood, you're in the Bronx. You grew up. Your mom was a caterer. But you come from a long line of chefs and cooks, also your grandmother and your great grandmother, right?

Kwame Onuwachi: Mm-hmm. So my grandmother had a barbecue spot, a fish fry, and a bar. So in the ‘50s in the South, it wasn't easy for a person of color to go out to the local bar or restaurant and have a good time without being harassed. So a lot of people open up things in the back of their houses, whether it was like a juke joint, a little bar, or a restaurant. And my family was the ones that always had restaurants. They were always the entertainers. So my grandmother had that in the south in Ville Platte, Louisiana. You know, my great-grandmother had that as well in like Beaumont, Texas. So, yeah, I came from a long line. My mother, like, ran around those restaurants as a kid. So when she moved to New York City and wanted to provide for her kids, she thought, why don’t I start a catering company?

Dan Pashman: And she catered for some pretty big celebrities who came through town.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty cool. I wasn't allowed to go, though, so I never got to meet them. 

Dan Pashman: But you helped cook in the kitchen.

Kwame Onuwachi: I heard. My sister made sure that I knew what I was missing. 

Dan Pashman: Right.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah.  But you helped cook in the kitchen.

Dan Pashman: But you helped cook in the kitchen.

Kwame Onuwachi: I helped cook in the kitchen. But I was like five-years-old. So, like, I couldn't go to the events. So I had to stay home with my babysitter and like a bunch of different ingredients. And that's how I really got my knack for creativity with food. I didn't learn how to cook good food until much later in my career.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: But what you were cooking at five or six with a babysitter.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. I made a cake one time. I just mix flour and water. It wasn't anything crazy, and put them in the oven. I made these...I don't know why I have these vivid memories, but like of this fish ball. I thought it was like the most inventive thing. I took the fish and I chopped it up and I just formed it into balls and put flour on the outside of it and fried it. But I didn't take the bones out. So my mom came home and she's like trying to eat it like, like if you were eating this microphone. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Kwame Onuwachi: And like, “This is good.” So like. Yeah. So that some of my earliest creations. 

Dan Pashman: Well you had nowhere to go but up. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I think that’s what she thought, too.

Dan Pashman: And what about earliest memory of something your mom made?

Kwame Onuwachi: Oh, peel-and-eat shrimp. She always had that. She always used to throw these parties at the house, and she would make peel-and-eat shrimp. So it's like our house spice or like a Cajun spice that she makes in the house. And butter, thyme, and garlic, and Gulf shrimp. And she would just sauté that with some crusty French bread. And gumbo, something that brought the family together. Any time we had a family function or it was a holiday, she would make gumbo, like seafood gumbo with chicken, andouille sausage, crab, shrimp. And then she used to make—every year for my birthday, she would ask me, what do I want for my birthday? And I could only usually get one thing. And it would be this fisherman's pie. And it was lobster and crab and crawfish, in a bechamel sauce with whipped potatoes and parmesan, like bruleed in the oven. It was super good.

Dan Pashman: So you had fancy tastes even from a young age.

Kwame Onuwachi: I mean, a little bit.

Dan Pashman: That's what I'm taking from that story. 

Kwame Onuwachi: A little bit. 

Dan Pashman: But I love the idea of eight-year-old Kwame being like, I want lobster pie on my birthday.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. Yeah, that was me. That was me.

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Dan Pashman:  So there were a lot of good memories in those early years. I know that, you were in school, you were largely in private school. You lived in this building that was pretty diverse. You were meeting all different folks in the building, cooking all different kinds of food, and your mom's food. But you were also getting into a lot of trouble. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. It's kind of easy to veer off on the wrong path, you know, when you grow up where I grew up in the Bronx, the South Bronx. You’re kind of left to your own laurels at a young age. And you have to start taking the train to go to school and if you get in with the wrong crowd, it's easy to kind of veer off. And she started noticing that.

Dan Pashman: So what’d she do? 

Kwame Onuwachi: She sent me on a vacation. She was like, you’re going on a vacation to Nigeria. And I was like, this is amazing. This is great.

Dan Pashman: So your mom tells you you're going on vacation to Nigeria. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. So she says you're going to see your grandfather. So my father is Nigerian and Jamaican, and my mother is Trinidadian and Creole from Louisiana. So she's like, you're going to see your grandfather for a couple of weeks. I'll see you in a couple of weeks. And I should’ve known how much she was crying that it was going to be more than a couple weeks, but I didn't put two and two together. So I was super excited, you know, kind of arrogant about it, too, to my sister for all the years that she put in my face who they were cooking for these catering events. You know? And I get on the plane and get there. It's great. It's a culture shock, though. You know, we didn't have any electricity and any running water. We weren't in Lagos. We were like in a small village in Delta State. And I quickly learned that it was not a vacation. I think, you know, it took like two months, but…

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: And you were like going like-so once a week, your grandfather would drive you like an hour to a call center to call your mom. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah, because there were no cell phones then.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Kwame Onuwachi: And we had to go to these call centers, like these Internet cafes.

Dan Pashman: Right. Right. So after a couple months there you go to the call center. If you go, we can call your mom.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. I'm like, wait, like school's about to start. You know, it's time for me to come home. I get it, you know? And she was like, you're not coming home. You wouldn't have got on the plane if I told you you were going there to learn respect. And she left me there for two years, and...

Dan Pashman: She said, you're not coming back till you learn respect. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: What were you thinking when she said that?

Kwame Onuwachi: I was like that new Harry Potter movie is coming out. I'm definitely not going to be able to see it. That’s honestly the first thing that went through my head. But I was like, I was really upset because I knew I was going to have to go to school out there. I had no idea what that was going to be like. I had heard about it from my cousins, like we would say things or I would talk back, and they’d be like, "You can’t do that in school here." And I was like, well I’m not going to school here so it doesn’t matter. But little did I know, I was.

Dan Pashman: Were you angry at your mom?

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah, absolutely. I was very, very angry at my mom and I didn’t understand. But it saved my life.

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Dan Pashman: Coming up, Kwame’s time in Nigeria changes him, but when he comes back, he still struggles with a lot of the same problems he had before he left. Then later, he ends up on a boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Stick around.

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+++ BREAK +++

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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman. Check out our recent episode about the Queens Night Market. It’s very different from high end food halls and festivals, because vendors there can’t sell anything for more than five bucks. So fancy chefs stay away. Instead, the people who cook there do it to share a piece of their culture, and themselves. And often to try to get their own culinary businesses off the ground. In this episode, we hear vendors’ stories in their own words. When Frances Roman came out at 15, her mom kicked her out of the house. Now Frances runs a popular stand at the Night Market, and her mom is her #1 helper:

CLIP (FRANCES ROMAN): Every night I had lines of just Queer people. And what's even crazy is that they come back looking for my mother, and I'm like, "Huh?" They love my mom. 

Dan Pashman: Of course, because of Coronavirus, the Queens Night Market hasn’t opened this year. So this episode isn’t just about the vendors, it’s also about what we’ve all lost in this pandemic. I really hope you’ll check it out, it’s called "The World Eats Here", it’s up now where you got this one. 

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Dan Pashman: Now let’s get back to my conversation with chef Kwame Onwuachi, taped live on stage in D.C. and a quick note that there is some explicit language in the first few minutes of this next section.

Dan Pashman: At the end of Kwame’s summer in Nigeria, instead of returning to the U.S. as he’d expected, he started school in Nigeria. And he quickly learned that discipline in school there was very different from what it is here.

Kwame Onuwachi: So if you don't do your homework over here, you know, nothing really happens to you. But over there, if you don't do your homework, you have to carry a cinder block across a soccer field six times. Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: So, did you do your homework?

Kwame Onuwachi: After that one time, yeah. I didn't really... I was like, I've heard about it. I'm like, no way.

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Kwame Onuwachi: First of all, Do they just keep cinder blocks around there? I've never seen a cinder block since I've been in this school. So there's no way they're making us do this.

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Kwame Onuwachi: But they did. They definitely did. And the whole school can see you. So you have to do that. And then, you know, if you get into a fight here in America, you get suspended or expelled. Over there, if you get into a fight, you dig your own height. And that takes a long time. 

Dan Pashman: Like dig a hole the depth of how tall you are?

Kwame Onuwachi: Dig a hole and constantly jump in to see if you cannot see over and you jump in and you're like, "Fuck, man. I gotta...."

Dan Pashman: Did you have to do that one?

Kwame Onuwachi: Hell, no, I wasn't fighting. The cinder block was enough for me, that was good. We're not fighting. Here's my lunch. Do whatever you want.

Dan Pashman: What about the food in Nigeria?

Kwame Onuwachi: The food took some getting used to. I mean, I grew up eating Nigerian food. You know, or West African food. But the classics, like egusi stew and, you know, red stew and pepper soup and moi moi and things like that. But having a bowl of like okra soup, that's just pure okra and pounded yam. We had onion stew in the morning over rice. To a 10-year-old American kid it was tough. I didn't really eat for the first month. I ate peanuts, they had ground nuts that they sold on the side of the street. And these like Cheez Doodle things called cheesies. And I eat that for a month straight.

Dan Pashman: But did you eventually...

Kwame Onuwachi: Oh, yeah, yeah. Eventually, I got real hungry and one morning that onion stew started smelling really good. And I took a bite of it and I was like, "Why wasn't I eating this the whole time?" And even the okra stew, it was great. And I think for me, it was really cool because once I learned how they were made, too, it made me more interested because we had to-you know, if we made like banga stew, which is like from the palm kernel. And you boil the palm kernel and you kind of like beat it in a mortar and pestle, like a giant mortar and pestle, and it turns into like a paste, and then you pass that paste through like some sort of strainer, a fine mesh strainer. And then you make your sauce from that. So like it was cool going and getting the palm kernels and then making the dish. Right? So it taught me this appreciation for food that I never knew before, even raising my own chickens. You know, at a certain point, I used to think back like, man, if I wanted a 20-piece wing basket, I just go to KFC or the chicken spot and get that. Here, I have to raise ten chickens and it takes like five months. You know? So like there was like hard lessons learned.

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Kwame Onuwachi: You know? Fighting for chicken wings was a thing and I never got them when I was the youngest. But it made me appreciate every part of food. And I think that directly translates into my career and what I do now.

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Dan Pashman: So after two years in Nigeria, you come back. Did you learn respect? 

Kwame Onuwachi: No. I was still a piece of shit kid. Yeah. I mean, I put on a good front for like a month, right? Like, yes, ma'am. Yes, sir. You know. And then I was a teenager and I got right back into the same things that got me sent out there in the first place.

Dan Pashman: Right. So you kind of fall in with a not great crowd. You go to college.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: You start off selling nutcrackers in college, which seems harmless enough, but then you move from there on to selling real drugs. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: And eventually, you got kicked out of college for selling drugs. And then you go through this period where you're not just selling drugs, but also doing a lot of drugs. You talk in the book about this morning you woke up and — we can get to it — but you cooked something and you said that was the first time in you couldn't remember how long that you didn't start the day with a handful of pills. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: It’s interesting because I think a lot of us go through a period when we’re young of aimlessness, but I think that there’s a difference between being aimless and being self-destructive. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: What do you think was pushing you in that direction?

Kwame Onuwachi: I went to school with 20 dollars in my pocket and I invested in a bottle of rum and Hawaiian punch, as soon as I got there. And I did that so I could eat when I was in school and help pay for my tuition. And then I got addicted to that fast lifestyle. And then I was like, I wanna sell this. And then okay, if I can sell that, then I can sell this. And then I became known on campus as the guy that just sold things. So I got addicted to that, and then I kind of lost myself in that. It was like, I was selling it, so then I started doing more than I was selling. And it was like, once there was no more, then I had to go back home. And I think it was a subconscious thought of maybe if I just run out of everything I’ll have to start fresh and really find out who I am. I inflicted that on myself so I could reset. But was really...even with that going on, I remember seeing Obama walk across the stage and win the election. And I just never thought he was gonna win. I mean, just because he's a black man in America. And you know, 50 years ago, like, I don't think we could play golf in certain places and stuff. So I was just like, this isn't going to happen. And I still voted for him and I was hopeful. And when it happened, I was just like, "What am I doing right now?" This person, like, you know, 50 years ago, we couldn't eat in the same restaurants. And now he is the president of the United States. Why can’t I do anything that I put my mind to? So at that moment, yes, I was still heavily doing drugs, but I threw away everything that I had. I gave away the things that I could give away. And I bought a one-way plane ticket to Louisiana. 

Dan Pashman: Which is where your mom had moved.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: And that was when you sort of went to Louisiana. You said, I'm going to kind of come down here, dry out, try to embark on a career as a chef. And you end up on a boat. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: This is right after...I don’t know if you guys remember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? So they were sending all these cleanup crews and all these boats and they need to feed the workers on the boats. So they were desperately looking for chefs to work these boats. And despite the fact that at this point, you didn't have a whole lot of experience...

Kwame Onuwachi: No. So the thing is, I didn't even go down there to be a chef. I went down there to be a rapper.

Dan Pashman: Oh! See, this is the part that was left out of the memoir. 

Kwame Onuwachi: I knew I was going to make it. We only had a couple of, you know, so many pages. We can't get into everything. But no, I went down there and I was going to do the music thing. And, you know, the only job I can get was in restaurants. It was the one job that I can literally walk into and jump into just like that. So I worked in the dining room. I worked in the kitchen. I worked as a dishwasher when I first moved down there. And I was just kind of still hustling, chasing that high of making money. The first job I got I was making twenty dollars a day as a waiter. And it was horrible going from making like four thousand dollars a week to twenty dollars a day 

Dan Pashman: Four thousand dollars a week as a drug dealer?

Kwame Onuwachi: Exactly. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Kwame Onuwachi: And the Deepwater Horizon came around because there was a temp at the place I was working. And he only worked one week and then I wouldn't see him for like three weeks. And I was like, "Where do you go? Like, what are you doing?" He was like, "Oh, I'm on the Gulf of Mexico, man. It's amazing." He's like, "Yeah, we get to cook. It's me, another chef. We make like nineteen hundred dollars a week. We can order whatever we want and we can just cook for like 30 people." I was like, how much did you say you make? And he was like, nineteen hundred dollars a week. I was like, can you send me the application? Because I really want to cook for these people. I think it would be really great to devote my time. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah, you're a real saint. 

Kwame Onuwachi: To these patriots that are saving the waters in our gulf. So I applied. I got the job because they're hiring anyone to go out there, because it was like cooking for pirates. It was crazy. So we have to drive to like Houma, Louisiana, like the little strings that you see on the map. That's where we were driving. Like the road was as big as this stage. And there was this water on each side. It was very scary, actually.

Dan Pashman: I picture it like driving to the end of the earth. 

Kwame Onuwachi: That's what it felt like. And my mom drove me down and she was like, "You sure you want to do this?" Like, you know, we got there. And she was just like, "This is gonna make you or break you. I know, like you don't know if you want to be a chef or not, but you're not going to have any....There's no Internet service out there. You can't just look up recipes. You have to cook from the heart. People are going to tell if you can actually cook or not.”

Dan Pashman: When you first got on the boat, like, set the scene. You take like a shuttle boat out.

Kwame Onuwachi: You take a shuttle boat like three hours into the Gulf of Mexico. And then it's like at night time. There's only a swing rope to get to the other boat. So you have to, like, literally... shit sorry. Like, oh, no, no, no way, wait, let me try again. You know? And then you swing over, you jump down, they throw your luggage. These like crazy looking guys….

Dan Pashman: It’s like some Peter Pan shit.

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah, seriously...are on there. They're there helping you. Like you jump...that, you jump into their arms and then they catch your luggage and put it down. And it was it was very, very scary for me, never being in the middle of the ocean.

Dan Pashman: Who are the other people in the boat?

Kwame Onuwachi: They're like these really country-looking Caucasian people. Yeah. Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: And when you see that, what are you thinking?

Kwame Onuwachi: I'm like, ahhh this isn’t going to work out. This is not going to work out. This isn’t going to end well. Had the movie Get Out come out before, I may have had some sort of insight to what was going to happen. But I had to use my imagination. I remember the first question the chef asked me. He was like, "Do you know how to read?" And I was like, "Excuse me?" And he was like, "I have a lot of people like you that come on this boat that don't know how to read. So..."

Dan Pashman: When he said people like you, he meant...

Kwame Onuwachi: He meant people that wear hoodies. No, he meant black person. 

Dan Pashman: OK. 

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah, yeah. He meant a black person. And I was like, this conversation is over. You're just gonna cook your food, I’m gonna cook my food. I'm not going to be your sou chef or anything like that. And that said, I'll probably only do three weeks as I'll be fired after this. So and I'm just like, "This is...what am I doing?" You know, the money is never worth it. And I start cooking. And I start cooking things that my mom taught me how to cook, you know, red beans and rice, jambalaya, shrimp etouffee, gumbo. And the people that were on the boat were from Louisiana. They were just from backcountry of Louisiana. So like they would come down and smell things and say, like, "What are you making?" And I'm like, "Oh, I'm making, you know, chicken fricassee", or "I'm making etouffee or catfish atchafalaya." And they're like, I cannot wait for dinner. You know? And they would eat in the galley. You know, I think is what they call a...the kitchen was just silent. Just like this. Silent. You just heard like the forks and knives clanking. And you would see them like, "I'm not eating breakfast. Who's cooking? Is Tex cooking breakfast? I'm not eating, I’m waiting for lunch." And that's how it starts. So when I went on my break, my one week break, I thought I was never gonna get invited back because I had clearly disrespected the head chef of the boat saying, I'm going to cook my own food. And when I got back, he wasn't there anymore. There was another guy.

Dan Pashman: When you got back onto the boat for a second time?

Kwame Onuwachi: Yeah, after my week off. And I was like, "Where's Tex?", and they were like, "We asked him not to come back. We just want your food." So that's when I knew I had something. You can clap. It's OK. 

[APPLAUSE] 

Kwame Onuwachi: It's all right. Thank you. It's for the podcast. You know, we've got to make it seem exciting. Just cut the part out where I asked them to clap. Okay?

Dan Pashman: Yeah. That was totally organic. 

Kwame: Because they don't want that. I don’t want to be that guy. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah. So when you realized they had asked you back because they loved your food so much, how did that feel?

Kwame Onuwachi: It felt great. It felt extremely validating. And I got bit by this bug of like, "Oh, I want to cook more because it's making people happy." You know, I wasn't getting any extra bonus points. I wasn't getting...I wasn't in the press. I was in the Gulf News or anything like that. I was just like, I was just cooking for people. And they were like, "This is good. Thank you." And this feeling that I got, I wanted more of it. Mainly, I gained this connection with someone that I thought I would never gain a connection to on that boat. You know, a group of people that I thought, clearly, were racist and I don't know if they were or not or weren't. But, I knew that we bonded over something and it was a plate of food.

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Dan Pashman: After that experience on the ship in the Gulf, Kwame’s life had a new direction. But a lot still had to happen before he would get to the James Beard Award and the movie based on his life. Next week, in part two of our conversation, Kwame talks his way into a big break. He meets a woman who mentions she needs a caterer, and he responds...

CLIP (KWAME ONWUACHI): You never asked me what I do. And she’s like, what do you mean? I was like, I’m a caterer. And she was like, "You’re a caterer?" I’m like, yeah. And she’s like, "How old are you?" I was like, "Ma’am, that is irrelevant. What catering services do you need?"

Dan Pashman: Plus, Kwame talks about dealing with racism in high-end kitchens and trying to run his own restaurant without giving into his worst impulses. That’s next week. Part two is up now and it includes a brand new update. 

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Dan Pashman: If you’re enjoying the special episodes we’re sharing this week, I hope you’ll spread the word on social media. Tell your friends to check us out. And please take a minute right now and make sure you subscribe to our podcast in Apple Podcasts, Follow us in Spotify, Favorite in Stitcher, whatever the thing is in your app. That way you can stay connected to us and hear future episodes, like our next one about the enslaved man who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey.  One more reminder: Instagram Live 10th Anniversary party with Sohla El-Waylly and Carla Hall. Tomorrow night, 9 p.m. eastern, bring a drink and/or a pint of ice cream. I’ll be bringing both.