The restaurant business is a brutal game, with incredibly high levels of competition, notoriously hard-to-please critics, and the inevitability of having to fiercely defend any position you attain.
It’s a scene that makes or breaks the world’s chefs, and the stiff competition drives the very best to new culinary heights.
Despite food being at worst an absolute essential and at best a full-blown obsession, chefs don’t get the quite the same fanfare as entertainers or athletes.
With that in mind, you might not be aware of what’s been dubbed the ‘Oscars of the food world’: the James Beard Foundation Awards.
Having run annually since their 1990 inception, the James Beard Awards bring together the US’s best and brightest kitchen dwellers to celebrate another year of innovation and achievement.
The awards focus on highlighting the most exceptional restaurateurs, bakers and bartenders, and they’re highly-coveted prizes indeed.
Seeing as it’s a US-exclusive awards ceremony, it’s not quite on the level of global celebrity as the Oscars, but it’s nonetheless full of highly-competitive candidates that could give the rest of the world a run for its money.
Held at the Lyric Opera of Chicago on June 16th, 2025, the show bestowed the following awards:
- Outstanding Restaurateur: Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, Frenchette, Le Veau d’Or, and Le Rock, New York, NY
- Outstanding Chef: Jungsik Yim, Jungsik, New York, NY
- Outstanding Restaurant: Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder, CO
- Emerging Chef: Phila Lorn, Mawn, Philadelphia, PA
- Best New Restaurant: Bûcheron, Minneapolis, MN
- Outstanding Bakery: JinJu Patisserie, Portland, OR
- Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker: Cat Cox, Country Bird Bakery, Tulsa, OK
- Outstanding Hospitality: Atomix, New York, NY
- Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program: Charleston, Baltimore, MD
- Outstanding Bar: Kumiko, Chicago, IL
- Best New Bar: Identidad Cocktail Bar, San Juan, PR
- Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service: Arjav Ezekiel, Birdie’s, Austin, Texas
- Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service: Ignacio Jimenez, Superbueno, New York, NY
- Best Chef: California: Jon Yao, Kato, Los Angeles, CA
- Best Chef: Great Lakes (IL, IN, MI, OH): Noah Sandoval, Oriole, Chicago, IL
- Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, PA, VA): Carlos Delgado, Causa and Amazonia, Washington, D.C.
- Best Chef: Midwest (IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD, WI): Karyn Tomlinson, Myriel, St. Paul, MN
- Best Chef: Mountain (CO, ID, MT, UT, WY): Salvador Alamilla, Amano, Caldwell, Idaho
- Best Chef: New York State: Vijay Kumar, Semma, New York, NY
- Best Chef: Northeast (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT): Sky Haneul Kim, Gift Horse, Providence, RI
- Best Chef: Northwest & Pacific (AK, HI, OR, WA): Timothy Wastell, Antica Terra, Amity, OR
- Best Chef: South (AL, AR, FL, LA, MS, PR): Nando Chang, Itamae AO, Miami, FL
- Best Chef: Southeast (GA, KY, NC, SC, TN, WV): Jake Howell, Peninsula, Nashville, TN
- Best Chef: Southwest (AZ, NM, NV, OK): Yotaka Martin, Lom Wong, Phoenix, AZ
- Best Chef: Texas: Thomas Bille, Belly of the Beast, Spring, Texas
- Humanitarian of the Year: Chad Houser
Topics: Celebrity, Restaurants and bars, TV and Film
Rachael Davis