Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi is the One to Watch 2023

American-Nigerian chef Kwame Onwuachi has made a stunning comeback to the restaurant scene at New York's Tatiana, which continues to honour his heritage while innovating and serving cuisine of the highest quality. Now the restaurant has been awarded the One to Watch Award 2023 by the World's 50 Best Restaurants.

The announcement is part of a collection of individual awards handed out in the build-up to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, sponsored by S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna, which will be unveiled at a ceremony in Valencia, Spain on 20 June 2023.

Based in the Lincoln Center, Onwuachi has chosen a location appropriate to his mission to rebuild and reclaim Afro-American culinary heritage but pushed to the highest level, with a space that honours New York culture as much as it does his West African experiences.

The restaurant is named after the chef's sister who helped raised him while his mother turned shifts in restaurant kitchens as a chef and with its bold, electric and even irreverent approach to fine dining, it manages to create something genuinely new and of-its-time.

Small sharing dishes like crispy okra with honey and mustard, or West African egusi dumplings, as well as bigger plates like shawarma-roasted chicken with turmeric lamb rice, and head-on shrimp with creole butter and brioche, elevate the cuisine, while making the experience inclusive and free of any pretension.

See below for other recipients of The World's 50 Best Restaurants individual awards.

Basque chef and fearless food innovator Andoni Luis Aduriz has been awarded The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Icon Award 2023.

The chef is known for his unrelenting curiosity and experimentation with ingredients and techniques to create a unique cuisine that explores our relationship with food from every angle, at his restaurant and creative hub, Mugaritz.

An alumnus of elBulli, where he worked under Ferran Adrià, Luis Aduriz has never stopped chasing the novel, the new and the interesting in his cooking. Applying a rigorous cooking and scientific approach, Mugaritz, which closes for six months of the year to facilitate research, has become to represent more than a restaurant, but rather a creative hub where ideas and concepts can be incubated and a point of intersection between the worlds of science, food, gastronomy, art and engineering.

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants previously announced the winner of the award for the World’s Best Female Chef 2023, Elena Reygadas for her work at one of Mexico City’s outstanding restaurants, Rosetta.

Having left her native Mexico to study at the French Culinary Institute in New York and then to work with Italian chef Giorgio Locatelli at his flagship London restaurant Locanda Locatelli, Reygadas returned to her home country to open Rosetta in Mexico City in 2010. The project became a vehicle for Reygadas’ research and exploration of Mexico’s culinary biodiversity and culinary history, and her cuisine took shape as a modern application of ancient cooking techniques and the utilisation of local ingredients. The menu includes dishes like her savoy cabbage tacos with pistachio pipián sauce, sweet potato ravioli with matcha, and corn tamales with smoked cream.

Bread and its integral history in Mexican culture became an important component as she researched and developed her own recipes based on ancient artisanal baking techniques. It was a passion that lead to her opening La Panadería de Rosetta bakery. Other establishments l Lardo, Café Nin and Bella Aurora followed as her popularity grew.

A dedicated student of Mexican culinary tradition, Reygadas is also known as an expert in the field and publishes her ‘cuadernos’ – or notebooks, which feature extracts of academic texts that she considers important to the global conversation on gastronomy.

Always pushing the boundaries of what a restaurant is and how it contributes to society, in 2022, Reygadas launched a scholarship programme called Beca Elena Reygadas, which gives disadvantaged women the chance to pursue a career in the culinary industry.

A positive force for change in the culinary world, a hugely talented chef that draws inspiration from the past and inspires those around her, Reygadas is a fitting awardee of the World’s Best Female Chef 2023. 

This article was updated on 26 May 2023.