Chef Kwame Onwuachi is turning the release of his new cookbook into a live theatrical event, hosting a late-night-style cooking and talk show at Lincoln Center next month. The show, called All Hours With Kwame & Friends, lands at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on September 22, with tickets priced at $188 or $250 for a package that includes an after-party.
As reported by Time Out New York, Onwuachi will cook live recipes from his upcoming cookbook, All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever, while leading an evening of conversation and storytelling with special guests. The book, his second cookbook and third published title overall, is set for release the same day, September 22. Time Out's Morgan Carter, the outlet's food and drink editor, notes the event is presented by Resy and will include Tanteo Tequila pours as part of the night.
The $250 ticket tier covers admission to an after-party Onwuachi will host at Tatiana, his acclaimed restaurant inside David Geffen Hall, featuring bites and beverages inspired by the new book. Tatiana opened in November 2022 as a flagship culinary component of Lincoln Center's $550 million campus overhaul, according to the Stanton Hoch Team, and former New York Times critic Pete Wells named it the No. 1 restaurant in New York City in both his 2023 and 2024 annual rankings, per Fine Dining Lovers.
A Bronx Bodega Comes to the Newhouse Stage
The Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater is an intimate Off-Broadway space with 299 seats arranged around a 3/4 thrust stage, located on the lower level of Lincoln Center Theater beneath the Vivian Beaumont, according to Lincoln Center Theater. Event sponsor FreshDirect will build a Bronx-inspired bodega display for the night, according to Broadway World, a nod to Onwuachi's Bronx childhood, when he famously raised $20,000 selling candy on subways to launch his first catering company before training at the Culinary Institute of America and later appearing on Top Chef. Every ticket will also come with a co-branded All Hours x FreshDirect gift bag that includes a copy of the new cookbook.
Onwuachi's résumé carries plenty of institutional weight to back the showbiz framing. He won the James Beard Foundation Award for Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2019, has hosted the James Beard Awards ceremony twice, and was named to Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People list in 2025. His 2019 memoir, Notes from a Young Black Chef, was optioned for a feature film adaptation by A24, and his 2022 cookbook, My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef, collected more than 125 recipes from across the African Diaspora.
A National Tour Anchored by His Own Restaurants
The Lincoln Center date is just one stop on a broader cookbook tour that kicks off September 17. The tour includes a stop at Reparations Club in Los Angeles with Ava DuVernay on September 18, a New York stop at Fish Cheeks on September 21, and a collaboration dinner with chef Michael Solomonov at Zahav in Philadelphia on September 26, according to Broadway World. The itinerary also folds in dinners at Onwuachi's own restaurants, including Dōgon in Washington, D.C., and Maroon in Las Vegas.
Dōgon opened at the Salamander Washington DC hotel in September 2024, an Afro-Caribbean concept honoring 18th-century Black astronomer Benjamin Banneker that earned a spot on North America's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2026, per the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. It marked Onwuachi's return to D.C. after previously running Kith/Kin at the Wharf. Maroon, meanwhile, opened at SAHARA Las Vegas in April 2026 as an Afro-Caribbean steakhouse built around a custom jerk pit, and it's billed as the first Las Vegas Strip flagship led by a Black chef, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Its concept honors the Maroons, 17th-century descendants of enslaved Africans who formed independent communities in Jamaica.
Hoodline previously covered Onwuachi's growing New York footprint, including his Patty Palace stand on Lincoln Center Plaza and its later expansion into Time Out Market Union Square. His restaurant ventures haven't all landed without turbulence; a Miami Beach spot he oversees, Las' Lap, recently went dark with no reopening date announced. Beyond restaurants, Onwuachi co-founded The Family Reunion, an annual four-day culinary festival launched in 2021 with Salamander Hotels founder Sheila Johnson to spotlight Black and Caribbean chefs, held each year at the Salamander Resort in Middleburg, Virginia.
For New Yorkers, the September 22 show offers a rare chance to see a chef of Onwuachi's stature cook live in a theater setting rather than behind a restaurant pass, with the after-party at Tatiana giving ticket holders a taste of the new book's recipes before it hits shelves.
