Five local chefs and restaurants are in the big dance, finalists for the James Beard Foundation Awards! Two are in national categories: Bûcheron will compete with nine others for Best New Restaurant and Bar Brava is in the final five for outstanding wine program. Wow!
Courtesy of Bar Brava
Three of the five finalists for Best Chef: Midwest are from Minnesota: Shigeyuki Furukawa for Kado no Mise, Diane Moua for her new Minneapolis spot, Diane’s Place, and
Karyn Tomlinson of Myriel in St. Paul. That makes me nervous, because sometimes we end up dividing our local voters. They’ll compete with Loryn Nalic from Balkan Treat Box near St. Louis, Missouri and David Utterback from Ota and Yoshitomo in Omaha, Nebraska. No Milwaukee or Madison representation this year.
Courtesy of Kado no Mise
We had 11 restaurants and chefs on the long list, so to have five move on is pretty amazing.
Bar Brava is one of the pioneers of the natural wine space in Minnesota and this is an incredible endorsement of what owner Dan Rice has been building since 2019. I’ve sat at that bar and told Dan that I didn’t like natural wine and he’s patiently brought me bottles that I loved and bottles that I didn’t. Amazing to be a finalist. Just awesome.
And Bûcheron! What to say about one of our Best New Restaurants of 2024, it’s a clear leader in our new restaurant scene (Vinai was also on the long list for this category). The team is top notch: with incredible hospitality from Jeanie Janas Ritter and the technique that chef Adam Ritter honed at Spoon & Stable and Demi.
Photo by Kevin Kramer
We’ve had winners in the past: Christina Nguyen won Best Chef: Midwest for her work at Hai Hai last year, and Ann Ahmed of Gai Noi, Khâluna, and Lat 14 Asian Eatery was also a finalist in that category. We’ve only had two national award winners from Minnesota: Owamni earned Best New Restaurant in 2022, and Gavin Kaysen won Rising Star Chef in 2008 when he was at Café Boulud in NYC, so that barely counts as a win for us.
Our other past Best Chef: Midwest winners are Tim McKee (La Belle Vie) in 2009, Alex Roberts (Restaurant Alma) in 2010, Isaac Becker (112 Eatery) in 2011, Paul Berglund (when he was at the Bachelor Farmer) in 2016, Kaysen in 2018, and Ann Kim for Young Joni (the famous F*** Fear speech) in 2019.
Good luck to everyone, and go support your local restaurants! Winners will be announced Monday, June 16 in Chicago—stay tuned.
