À LA MINUTE: Chef Paul Carmichael of NYC’s Kabawa
Welcome to Buffet Magazine, an independently owned digital food magazine. Our Tuesday editions are where we feature great writing about food. Thursday is for recipes.
Readers Revealed
Last week we told you that we’ll be throwing our very first Buffet party, in collaboration with Resident and Island Creek Oysters and celebrating the release of Picador’s new editions of MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating. That’s on November 2nd, and tickets sold out extremely quickly. (Sorry!)
The Buffet crew is super excited to announce the full list of readers we’ve invited to the party, who will be reading a mix of writing from MFK Fisher’s books and stories from Buffet: Marian Bull, J Lee, Shaina Loew, Alison Roman, Helen Rosner, and Mariam Rahmani. If you didn’t score a ticket, or you live elsewhere, not to worry: more events (in more places!) coming very soon. —Alex
À La Minute
In the words of Tom Brady and chef Paul Carmichael, “Let’s fucking go!” That’s right, it’s time for another À La Minute, the Buffet interview series in which we start a kitchen timer and barrage an unsuspecting food icon with as many questions as we can in five minutes.
This time, we sat down with Carmichael, the chef behind Kabawa, voted the best restaurant in New York City by the New York Times and a nigh-impossible reservation to nab. Kabawa offers a three-course Caribbean prix fixe menu, and a more casual bar next door for patties, sardines, and pickled okra à la carte (as well as a daiquiri folks cannot stop raving about). The Momofuku-aligned joint lives in the same East Village spot where Momofuku Ko spent its final act before closing in 2023. Carmichael, who opened Kabawa a few years after his Australian Momofuku outpost Seiōbo shuttered, divulged juicy tidbits about his go-to Panda Express order and an utterly vile cocktail he once imbibed containing grated cheese. He suavely evaded a few questions about middling top-tier restaurants and insane customers. But if there’s anything to take home from this five-minute whirlwind, it’s that if Carmichael is to get carnal with one West Indian delicacy, he’s “definitely fucking doubles.”
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. —Cale