Eating at the Met Gala
Kwame Onwuachi brought his culinary vision to the first Monday in May.
Would you believe me if I told you I was writing this in the back of a cab? Because I am.
I spent four hours on the tarmac last night, but I’m back in New York and I must dive into the Met Gala food. The red carpet looks were amazing — the best I’ve seen in a long time — but we need to talk about Kwame Onwuachi, the man behind the Met Gala meal.
Along with being an incredibly talented chef, Kwame is a wonderful person. I interviewed him for The MICHELIN Guide last year, and the conversation was memorable. He was warm, funny, intentional and the kind of person you feel like you can stay on the phone with for hours.
Now let’s dive in.
The menu
The man behind the menu
Chef Kwame Onwuachi, a James Beard Award winner, is the culinary force behind Tatiana, one of New York’s hottest restaurants, and Dōgon, a new restaurant in DC. Named after his sister, Tatiana pays homage to his West African, Caribbean and Creole roots while honoring the history of Old San Juan Hill — the predominantly Black and Afro-Latino neighborhood that once occupied the area. His culinary journey began at age five, working alongside his mother in her catering business, with inspiration drawn from his grandmother who owned a restaurant in the South during the Jim Crow era.
Onwuachi created the menu for the Met Gala, where his culinary vision complemented the event's theme celebrating Black dandyism. His carefully crafted menu featured elevated soul food during cocktail hour — including hoecakes with crispy chicken and cornbread topped with caviar — followed by a dinner that showcased papaya piri piri salad, creole roasted chicken and sides of BBQ collard greens. “I was inspired by Black dandyism and the Black experience in fashion—it’s pulled from so many different avenues and routes of the diaspora,” he told Vogue.
What makes his cooking so remarkable is the way he weaves personal narratives into every dish. "If a dish tells a story, it has a soul," he said when we chatted last year. "You're not just cooking for perfect seasoning. You're cooking to share something with someone. I always try to envelop stories into my cuisine and really get some intention behind it," he said. And it shows. His approach was perfectly suited for the Met Gala's celebration of Black dandyism, where both fashion and food were vehicles for cultural expression.
Thank you for being here.