Kwame Onwuachi interview: recipes for any hour of the day

A new Kwame Onwuachi interview with Library Journal accompanies the September 22 release of his third cookbook, "All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever," out this week from Knopf.

The book skips courses for clocks. It moves through a single day: breakfast dishes such as Corn Milk French Toast and the Bodega BEC, afternoon staples like Souped-Up Top Ramen and the Red Stew Chicken Parm, evening plates including Drunken Noodles alla Vodka, Creole Sausage Roll-Ups and Brussels Sprout Suya.

What the Kwame Onwuachi interview reveals

All of the success and awards are cool, but delicious food is still what really moves the needle for me.

Knopf publishes "All Hours" as Onwuachi's third book and his second collaboration with Joshua David Stein, the James Beard Award-winning writer who also co-wrote "Notes from a Young Black Chef" (2019) and "My America" (2022).

Onwuachi grew up between New York City, Nigeria and Louisiana, a route folded into the menus at his restaurants in New York, Washington D.C., Miami and Las Vegas. Tatiana, his New York restaurant, has placed on the New York Times' top 100 restaurants list every year since 2022, and Time named him to its 100 Most Influential People list in 2025.

In the Kwame Onwuachi interview, published by Library Journal, he weighs the book against his résumé. "All of the success and awards are cool, and I'm deeply grateful for them, but I've discovered that delicious food is still what really moves the needle for me," he says.

A release week built around one book

The publication date doubles as an event date. Resy, Lincoln Center Theater and FreshDirect stage a ticketed evening at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on September 22, from 7 to 9 p.m., mixing conversation, a cooking demonstration and a bodega-style display, according to BroadwayWorld. An after-party follows at Tatiana from 9 to 11 p.m.

That night sits inside a longer run: a multi-city dinner series between September 16 and 26 pairs restaurants in Washington D.C., Las Vegas and Philadelphia with the release, the same four-city footprint AMUSE covered earlier this month.

Onwuachi's first two books, published in 2019 and 2022, landed three years apart. Nothing in the Kwame Onwuachi interview says whether "All Hours" keeps that pace or breaks it, the way the book itself breaks with mealtime.