Chef Keem Hughley Brings His Signature Flavor To REALM, D.C.’s New Seychelles-Inspired Rooftop
I’m biased when it comes to Chef Keem Hughley. I’ll admit that upfront. Walking into REALM on a Friday night in Washington D.C.—just two weeks after opening at the Hyatt […] The post Chef Keem Hughley Brings His Signature Flavor To REALM, D.C.’s New Seychelles-Inspired Rooftop appeared first on Essence.
Black News 
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready… I’m biased when it comes to Chef Keem Hughley. I’ll admit that upfront.
Walking into REALM on a Friday night in Washington D.C.—just two weeks after opening at the Hyatt House in Shaw—the rooftop was packed. The space was beautiful, all 360-degree views of the Capitol and Monument, and people were lingering over drinks instead of rushing through them to make it to their next spot. And Keem? He wasn’t running between the bar and kitchen like his life depended on it.
If you knew him at Bronze, you know what I mean.
We sat down and I ordered my usual—lemon drop martini with reposado—while people around us sipped on things like the Caravel (aged rum with grilled pineapple purée and vanilla) and the Trade Winds (bourbon-forward with tamarind syrup and Angostura bitters). Keem and his team, including general manager Sonat who came from the Proper Hotel in Los Angeles, want REALM to feel different than other rooftops in the city. More care, more attention. “Rooftops are very transactional in nature,” he tells me. “So what’s it feel like to have a service-forward rooftop? So that’s what we’re trying to solve.”
When the Coconut Crab Cakes came out—lump crab tossed with shredded coconut, served with mango-tamarind chutney—I remembered why I trust whatever this man puts on a menu. The Cassava Roti Short Rib Tacos and Jerk Lemongrass Chicken Fried Rice followed, and yes, the flavors felt familiar in the way Bronze always did, but different too. Island-inspired, he calls it. Here, there’s going for more of a Seychelles vibe than the Afrofuturistic East African concept that made Bronze what it was.
“I inherited this concept,” Keem says, explaining that he came in as Area Culinary Director for Donohoe Hospitality and gave the rooftop “body love,” which is his flavor profile extended into someone else’s vision. “So when people taste the flavors, it’s familiar to Bronze, but a distant cousin.” Bronze was based on a fictional traveler from East Africa in the 1300s; REALM pulls from the Seychelles, right off East Africa in the Indian Ocean. Close, but not the same.
And if you wonder how things have been going since they’ve opened? Well, it’s Keem, afterall. They’re doing 200 covers a night—about their max—and Wednesdays when they host Eclectic Taste, the place is packed. “It’s literally the hottest night of the week,” he says. “It almost feels like one of those old pre-COVID” nights. The concept is drink-led with a shareable menu that still carries Keem’s signature (even the sliders are made with wagyu instead of regular ground beef). “If I have to do a slider because I’m in a hotel, just make it tight. Let’s not just give them anything.”
But here’s the thing that really stood out to me as the most beautiful part of the experience, sitting and talking to him: Keem didn’t seem stressed. At Bronze, I remember watching him bartend, host, serve, then run downstairs to cook food, all in the same night. “I remember one night at Bronze, this table, I was bartending. I was also the host that night,” he tells me. The family waited forever to be seated because he was finishing drinks. When he finally got to them, the patriarch was frustrated. Keem seated them, brought menus, took their order, made their drinks, then went downstairs to cook their food. “By the time I brought the food out, he just threw his hands up. He was like, ‘Man, you’re crazy.'”
He laughs telling it now, but you can hear the exhaustion underneath. “Especially in our last days when budget was super tight, you just had to do what you had to do.”
Bronze closed earlier this year, and there’s still weight in how he talks about it. After all, if you’ve ever been there, then you know the dining room was special, and a place where the creative community gathered on any given night. He remembers one Wednesday when Jason Reynolds was there, Amy Sherald (who painted Michelle Obama’s portrait) was upstairs, and a New York Times writer was at another table. “And that was just a Wednesday,” he says.
At REALM, the energy is different. He’s not carrying the weight of ownership the same way. Even working 14-15 hour days (“that’s just a Tuesday for me”), there’s a lightness that wasn’t there before.
And though he’s building something different at REALM, that sense of community, and creating a space where people feel taken care of is still there. When Alex Vaughn had her birthday there recently, her mother pulled Keem aside afterward. “She was like, ‘Y’all took care of us. The service is amazing. The food was great. Y’all are so personable.’ That to me is a better compliment than “I had a really good slider.” It’s that level of care, he says, that sets them apart. People can come for ladies night, for special celebrations, and trust they’ll be looked after.
The cocktail program he developed includes six Black-owned spirits: Ten To One rum, Vusa vodka, Busabaca (which was in Bronze’s porn star martini). But he’s particular about how he talks about it. “Just because it’s Black owned, the product still has to be something that we’re not sacrificing quality because then that’s sacrificing for ourselves too. Those brands work on their own. They stand up. I don’t have to announce that it’s Black owned. It’s just good.”
Bronze will come back “in other forms,” he says, continuing that Afrofuturistic path he started. But right now, REALM is where he is. And watching him that Friday night, moving through the space without that crushing weight he used to carry, it’s clear this chapter is different.
He’s still working his ass off. But at least now, he can breathe.
The post Chef Keem Hughley Brings His Signature Flavor To REALM, D.C.’s New Seychelles-Inspired Rooftop appeared first on Essence.
