“I live in Las Vegas now,” Kwame Onwuachi tells Forbes Travel Guide on a sunny March afternoon. The chef has just come from playing golf and is heading into a day of work at his new Caribbean steakhouse, Maroon at Sahara, debuting April 24.
The stakes are high even before the meat hits the grill. “This is the most important opening of my life,” he says. Onwuachi chose to go all in on a new city, a new concept and a career-defining moment — all at once.
For a chef whose trajectory has already been defined by cultural impact, critical acclaim and a string of headline-making restaurants, such as New York’s Tatiana, Dogon at Forbes Travel Recommended Salamander Washington DC and Miami’s Las’Lap, this one feels different. It is his biggest gamble yet. “It would’ve been so easy just to bring a Tatiana here, but I still have some fight in me,” he says with a laugh.
Maroon is not simply another steakhouse on the Strip. It’s the first Caribbean steakhouse in Las Vegas, a category-defining concept rooted in Onwuachi’s heritage — Nigerian, Jamaican, Trinidadian and Creole from Louisiana — that brings jerk cooking to a new audience.
Raised between New York City, Nigeria and Louisiana, Onwuachi says his cooking was shaped by the global influences of the African diaspora and his early experiences in his mother’s Bronx kitchen. The combination has earned him top industry honors. In 2025, he curated the menu for the Met Gala’s “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” and remains a familiar television presence (his appearance on Netflix’s Chef Table was one of the seventh season’s most memorable episodes). He is also a renowned author (Notes from a Young Black Chef and My America) and the founder of The Family Reunion, an annual gathering at Virginia’s Five-Star Salamander Middleburg celebrating diversity within hospitality.
His Las Vegas chapter began when Alex Meruelo Jr., son of Sahara owner Alex Meruelo, visited Tatiana and urged his father to try it. “[Alex] loved it,” Onwuachi says. “I came to Vegas with the team. We hit it off.”
Inside Maroon, the journey begins before the first dish arrives. The restaurant tells the story of the Jamaican Maroons — Africans who escaped British colonial rule in the 17th century and developed jerk cooking as both sustenance and survival, using what grew and roamed wild on the island: pimento, allspice, Thai bird chile, wild thyme and wild hog.
That narrative becomes the foundation of the menu — and the experience. “I wanted to make something that was for Vegas — to not only give Vegas what it wants but what it needs,” he says.
The entrance is like “going through the slot canyons in the desert,” Onwuachi explains. The restaurant then opens into a dramatic reveal: a live-fire jerk pit at the center of the dining room. The grills recall traditional Jamaican oil-drum pits, reimagined in stainless steel.
Around it, the room unfolds in intimate sections — banquettes and nooks that create a sense of discovery. That same philosophy drives the sprawling menu of more than 50 items that reinterprets steakhouse classics through a Caribbean lens while introducing new dishes.
Dinner begins with raw and chilled preparations inspired by Jamaica’s Hellshire Beach, then builds toward a fire-driven steakhouse core in the jerk pit. In between are small and large plates, patties, flatbreads and fish.
Onwuachi recommends starting with the suya beef tartare, served tableside with a Nigerian spice emulsion, marinated egg yolk, capers, shallots and pickled onions, alongside brioche.
The seafood tower is a collection of composed dishes, some also served à la carte: toro bujol — a Trinidadian riff on salted cod but with cured toro and avocado — oysters with tamarind or green seasoning mignonette, pepper prawns inspired by Jamaican roadside seafood shacks and served cold in an Aneto spice broth, king crab, uni and saltfish.
“One of my favorite things is the crispy okra and green mango salad with tomato choka,” he says. Choka is a Trinidadian dish — stewed tomatoes caramelized with aromatics, almost like a sofrito.
The steakhouse salad gets a makeover as a chopped salad with gooseberries, radishes, grapes and puffed quinoa, layered with papaya and green goddess dressings. Small and large share plates include jerk garlic shrimp lo mein, curried goat agnolotti, a callaloo raviolo and oxtail Wellington — filet mignon wrapped with oxtail, beef bacon and a beef patty crust, with oxtail and truffle jus poured tableside.
In the jerk pit, options range from barbecue Brussels sprouts to jerk chicken. Cuts like pork tomahawk, rack of lamb and rum-aged porterhouse, ribeye and tenderloin are all dry-aged for a minimum of 28 days, then wrapped in cheesecloth soaked in rum and herbs then aged for another 20 days. “You get those sweet notes of the rum in the meat, and it all caramelizes as it cooks,” he says.
For authentic tastes, the team sources pimento wood, the defining element of traditional Jamaican jerk cooking, directly from the island. Because of conservation efforts, only wood from naturally fallen trees can be harvested, making it one of the most difficult ingredients to procure. The group has also begun planting its own trees. “We don’t put jerk food out if we don’t have pimento,” Onwuachi says. “We haven’t done it in eight years.”
To complement the proteins, sides include creamed coconut collards, crawfish mashed potatoes, truffle macaroni pie and oxtail bordelaise. Plus, there are accompaniments like tamarind mint jerk and Scotch bonnet honey butter.
Desserts lean nostalgic with a Caribbean perspective, from a steakhouse-style chocolate cake with cacao fruit ice cream to a Milo-infused crème brûlée. A family-style Key lime pie, rum cake with charred gooseberries and a tropical baked Alaska round out the sweet options.
“It wasn’t difficult to create these dishes,” he says. “When I’ve eaten at steakhouses, I think, ‘This is cool, but it’d be better with tamarind or more than salt and pepper.’”
Even after the opening of Maroon, he has no plans to slow down. He will release a new cookbook, All Hours, in September 2026. “It’s about food that I actually eat,” he says. “This one is more playful, my take on fast food, street food, things I actually crave.”
With so many demands now placed on him as a celebrity chef, there’s one thing he never loses sight of. “This is everything I dreamed of,” Onwuachi says. “It’s not easy, but I have an amazing team that allows me to be in multiple places at once.”
“I can’t just be in the kitchen anymore,” he adds. “Table 24 wants to say hi, someone wants a book signed. There’s a balance I have to strike, because I want to be locked in with the team. They need my presence.”
At the core, chef’s original passion still drives everything: “I got into this because I love cooking, and I have to continue to hone my craft.”
