Top Chef star Kwame Onwuachi is set to make his highly-anticipated return to D.C.’s culinary scene this spring with the opening of his new restaurant.
Dōgon by Kwame Onwuachi is set to debut as part of a substantial hotel enhancement initiative at the reinvigorated Southwest waterfront in Salamander Washington, D.C. The Afro-Caribbean eatery (pronounced “Doh-gon”) pays tribute to Washington D.C.’s late-1700s land surveyor Benjamin Banneker and his connections to the West African Dōgon tribe, DC Eater reports.
The restaurant will reflect Onwuachi’s Nigerian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Creole heritage. With a design concept from the architectural firm Modellus Novus, the same designer of Onwuachi’s critically acclaimed NYC eatery Tatiana, curtains of linked chains adorn the lobby of Dōgon at street level that draw inspiration from the mathematical instrument Banneker used to delineate city lines.
Behind them unfolds a spacious 200-seat dining room featuring a bar and a patio. The “astrological-like ceiling,” according to DC Eater, pays homage to the starry night sky that Banneker used as a geographical reference.