Square Culinary Creators LA Dinner with Kwame Onwuachi

To celebrate Juneteenth and the continuing mission to cultivate and elevate black owners and small businesses Square gathered a cooler than thou crowd to celebrate their new “The Future Needs Your Restaurant” campaign. The evening helped to launch the latest in the new Culinary Creators Project that focused on chefs and their restaurants.

The dinner hosted at Post & Beam highlighted the Baldwin Hills staple, on this evening resident Chef John Cleveland and celebrity Chef Kwame Onwuachi collaborated on the menu.

John Cleveland, Ashlee Simpson-Ross, Evan Ross, Stephen Satterfield, Kwame Onwuachi, Griffin Matthews

Coco & Breezy

During the first course, smoked red fish and caviar on toasted brioche and perfectly pungent Kanpachi Escovitch lubricated pallets as a discussion led by High on the Hogs’ Stephan Satterfield delved into the power of black dollars and the importance of Juneteenth in raising awareness for celebrating freedom and how it has come to garner more prominence in the past few years of American history. “The black experience is not monolithic there are so many avenues of blackness,” Onwuachi mentioned.

Evan Ross, Ashlee Simpson-Ross Jeri Mobley, David AriasStephen Satterfield, Kwame Onwuachi, John Cleveland

Further discussing the political act of naming this cookbook My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef, he explained the title as providing a sense of ownership to the way he operated, “Why did I call it that. When I was in the restaurant people would walk in, patrons asking can you tell me where the chef is. And I would be like what the fuck, this shit is on my chest man… Why do I have to be stuck in this thing, it was a fuck u to everybody. Notes From A Young Black Chef. I want to put it out there on the cover of this book cause I’m never not reminded that. For me in terms of my blackness I remember being asked to do a menu for the opening of the African American Museum, they wanted African American Cuisine, I was like everything I cook is African American Cuisine, cause I am African American, so whatever I cook is by definition “Black Food.”

Corey Stokes, Arima Ederra, Gabrielle Richardson, Kilo Kish

Michelle Papillion and Maurice Harris

Following the panel which featured the most poignant take away of maintaining autonomy of the discourse of Black food and Ethnic foods as having worth outside the status quo and white establishments, the evening was further highlighted during the Waygu short rib main course which was accompanied by a performance by Miguel who shared his voice as a made in LA act. Playing an unplug set that got the crowd off their chairs and singing along. Guests included Coco and Breezy, Kilo Kish, Evan Ross, Ashley Simpson Ross, Maurice Harris and so many more ignited the room with food, drink, song and conversations.