Esquire Names DC Chef North America's Chef Of The Year

WASHINGTON, DC — Esquire food critic Jeff Gordinier has released his list of the 22 best new restaurants in North America for 2019, and he has named a D.C. chef as his favorite of them all.

In addition to Seven Reasons and the Green Almond Pantry making the list, Kith/Kin at The Wharf was also among the 22 selected. Gordinier went even further, naming its chef, Kwame Onwuachi, the chef of the year.

"The long-overdue rise of African-American chefs around the country is the most exciting culinary movement in the world," Gordinier wrote. "Kwame Onwuachi—who came back from early failure to score big with his cooking at Kith/Kin and the publication of his essential memoir, Notes from a Young Black Chef—has become a leader in an ongoing conversation about where we’ve come from and where we’re headed."

In his write-up of Kith/Kin, he acknoledged that the eatery — located at 801 Wharf Street SW — opened two years ago, but "sometimes a great restaurant takes a while to hit its stride."

He added that it would be a "travesty not to raise a toast to the audacity and originality of his cooking down by the Wharf," noting the restaurant's unique blend of cuisine from Nigeria, New Orleans, and the Caribbean.

"Nowhere else are you going to find delights like Onwuachi’s bracingly spicy crab jollof rice or his meltingly tender goat roti or the scallops and brassicas," he writes. "And nowhere else are you going to eat sweets like the ones created by pastry chef Paola Velez, who deserves a James Beard Award nomination for trailblazing a way to serve habanero peppers as a dessert—accompanied by tres leches cake and elderflower snow."

For this column, Gordinier — Esquire's Food & Drinks editor — logged "countless miles" over the last 12 months, "crisscrossing this big country looking for the best eats, the best drinks, the best backstories, the best vibes."