Chicago Chefs Make Good Showing In James Beard Award Nominations
By Anthony Todd in Food on Feb 19, 2013 6:40PM
The entire food world was grouped around its collective Twitter feed this morning waiting for the James Beard Foundation to announce the semifinalists for the 2013 Beard Awards. The Beard Awards are like the Academy Awards of food, except that they go through an elimination process rather than one big award ceremony. Which means the whole thing stretches out for months and lots and lots of chefs get to be involved. It's kind of fun, actually. Plus, Chicago fared pretty well so far.
One of the big-deal categories is Best New Restaurant, and two Chicago restaurants made the cut: Grace and Balena. Grace is having quite an opening; Phil Vettel called them the best restaurant of 2013 (in February) and now this. Unsurprisingly, The Aviary made the Best Bar Program list, as did The Violet Hour. Naha and Spiaggia made the Outstanding Restaurant List, and Topolobampo is on the list for Best Service. Paul Kahan is the only Chicagoan to make the "Outstanding Chef" list (which is not the same as Best Chef: Great Lakes - we know, it's confusing) and, now that Mindy Segal has finally won, we can wholeheartedly root for Sixteen's Patrick Fahy to win Best Pastry Chef.
Best Chef: Great Lakes is the award that Chicago chefs fight over. Bruce Sherman finally won last year (after five nominations) so now the torch can pass to another. The whole list is below; we are particularly excited to see Paul Fehribach included, as Big Jones is doing some amazing things without necessarily making the kinds of national headlines that go along with a place like Girl & the Goat or Next. The complete list of Chicago nominees for Best Chef: Great Lakes is below; the finalists for all of the awards will be announced March 18. Good luck, everyone, and we'll keep you updated.
Best Chef: Great Lakes
Dave Beran, Next
Michael Carlson, Schwa
Paul Fehribach, Big Jones
Stephanie Izard, Girl & the Goat
Matthias Merges, Yusho
Chris Nugent, Goosefoot
Giuseppe Tentori, Boka
Paul Virant, Perennial Virant
Andrew Zimmerman, sepia