chef Kwame Onwuachi’s restaurant, The Shaw Bijou. The situation immediately calls to mind the abrupt closing of Washington D.C. Employees at the hotel’s reception desk have also apparently been instructed to say nothing and to forward all inquiries to Craveable. Pam Wiznitzer, who opened the attached bar, Gibson + Luce, and ran Henry’s bar program, quietly left back in January. Johnson offered a firm “no comment” about the closing. Craveable Hospitality issued a boilerplate statement that the company has “concluded their collaboration at Life Hotel in New York City,” as if Henry were little more than a pop-up. With Henry, none of that happened and the seeming silence feels unsettling, almost as if people want us to forget that the restaurant even existed in the first place.Ī veritable blockade has been thrown up by everyone involved. When restaurants close - especially restaurants that display all the trappings of success - owners and chefs often scramble to publicly thank their supporters, offer their condolences to the employees who will lose their jobs, and (almost inevitably) discuss the difficulty of running a small business in New York. (And a banner celebrating Johnson’s Beard Award still pops up when you visit Craveable’s website.) No one involved - Johnson, the management company Craveable Hospitality Group, or the hotel - offered a reason why. The restaurant’s website disappeared, as did its social-media accounts. If Johnson knew the end was nigh, his mile-wide smile didn’t betray it, but the finish appears to have arrived swiftly. (Johnson’s first cookbook, Between Harlem and Heaven, won a James Beard Award in May.)Īnd then, suddenly, the restaurant closed. What’s more, Johnson appeared just this week in an ambitious Times profile of black chefs who are changing the American food scene. He earned a glowing one star from the New York Times, and landed on both critic Pete Wells’s and GQ critic Brett Martin’s lists of the best new restaurants of 2018. The restaurant’s mission, as Johnson told me when it opened, was to expose the world to the power and the potential of African-inspired cooking in an environment that was unapologetically black, where hip-hop would blare, where the staff was comprised almost entirely of people of color, and where the dining room featured one of the most diverse crowds south of 125th Street.ĭuring its 11-month run, Johnson had no problem drawing critical acclaim around his restaurant’s cuisine. Johnson’s kitchen specialized in Pan-African cuisine, mixing staple dishes of the African diaspora and beyond - jollof, piri piri sauce, West African peanut sauce - into the fine-dining tradition. It’s not often that you can say a restaurant was truly original, but in the case of Henry at the Life Hotel, it’s an apt description. The post High-profile DC restaurant The Shaw Bijou closes two and a half months after opening appeared first on WTOP.A neon sign featuring J.J. Gorsuch said in his interview with The Post it was too little too late. Onwuachi also opened the upstairs bar to the public. The Shaw Bijou switched from a 13-course tasting menu to a seven-course menu, and dropped the price to $95. 29, 2016, Onwuachi, a former “Top Chef” contestant, said the restaurant “fostered an environment and restaurant that was not reasonable for all,” and announced he was adjusting the original model. Original plans included a members-only private bar everything from the door to the light fixtures were custom made. Depending on drinks and wine pairings, the tab could end up around $1,000 a couple. The tasting menu consisted of roughly 13 courses and cost diners upward of $300 a person. Longtime friends Kwame Onwuachi and Greg Vakiner opened The Shaw Bijou in November after spending nearly 18 months building the concept. Principal owner Kelly Gorsuch tells The Washington Post the fine-dining restaurant wasn’t filling seats and covering the costs it needed to stay open. ‘Top Chef’s’ highly anticipated restaurant, The Shaw Bijou, opens its doors in DCĪfter a year and a half of construction, permitting and menu testing, one of D.C.’s most highly anticipated restaurants will open its doors Tuesday.
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