Yesterday’s announcement of the official 2012 James Beard Foundation Awards nominations fueled a Twitter tidal wave, but here’s a quick recap of our local nominees: for Best Chef: Pacific, four of the five nominees include Michael Chiarello (Bottega), Chris Cosentino (Incanto), Christopher Kostow (Meadowood), and Daniel Patterson (COI); AQ for Best New Restaurant; A16 for Outstanding Wine Program; Bar Agricole for Outstanding Bar Program; Cyrus and Michael Mina for Outstanding Service; Melissa Chou of Aziza for Outstanding Pastry Chef; Danny Bowien (Mission Chinese Food) and Thomas McNaughton (flour + water) for Rising Star Chef of the Year; Boulevard for Outstanding Restaurant; and Gary Danko for Outstanding Chef. Emily Luchetti will be inducted into the 2012 James Beard Foundation Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America.
Congrats to local authors Heidi Swanson on her nomination for Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen (Ten Speed Press) and Paula Wolfert for The Food of Morocco (Ecco), and to writer Emily Kaiser Thelin for her piece “Cornering the Market” in San Francisco magazine and Ellen Cushing of the East Bay Express for “How Peet’s Starbucked Itself.”
You can view the entire list here. The next step are the awards shows at Lincoln Center in New York on May 4th for books/media/journalism, and May 7th for the restaurant and chef awards. Congrats and best wishes to all the nominees.
The New York breakfast of champions. Photo by Nicole Plue (winner of Outstanding Pastry Chef 2010).
