Pittsburgh still seeks top James Beard Award
This is the first time that the awards ceremony will be held outside New York City. The move to Chicago’s Lyric Opera after 24 years in Manhattan points to a shift away from New York restaurants as the center of the universe.
Monday is the 25th annual James Beard Awards in Chicago — a tribute that’s considered the Oscars of culinary awards. For the chef and restaurant categories, the awards are emerging as an increasingly important marker of a city’s desirability, even when the nominated restaurants and chefs don’t win.
Since the awards were founded in 1990, they have gone from an affirmation of New York-centric elite cuisine to an increasingly national gauge of urban food scenes that have become a central part of cities’ culture and development.
Despite Pittsburgh’s rise, the city has never had a restaurant nominated among finalists in any of more than 20 chef and restaurant categories, although many of them have been nominated as semifinalists. (Writers have fared better, with several finalists and award winners in the book, broadcast and journalism categories since the late 1990s.)
Since 2009, Pittsburgh restaurants have earned between two and five semifinalist spots annually. This year, they earned four, including Bar Marco executive chef Jamilka Borges for Rising Star of the Year; Butcher and the Rye for Outstanding Bar Program; Justin Severino of Cure for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic. Bill Fuller and Tom Baron of Big Burrito Restaurant Group were nominated for Outstanding Restaurateur again. None made it to the finals in March.
“For writers, the awards don’t really do as much. For chefs, it’s a different business,” said Marlene Parrish, a retired Post-Gazette food writer — and still actively writing — who has been a finalist and has won a James Beard journalism award for her newspaper series on cooking game in 2000. Her husband, Robert Wolke, was nominated for “What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained” (Norton, 2008).
“I’m surprised at how many people have become aware of it,” Mr. Severino said about his James Beard nomination. He attributes a combination of factors outside his kitchen that have led to the popularity of his restaurant: local press and reviews, national press in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and magazines such as Food & Wine, as well as a nomination as a semifinalist for two years in a row.
“The nomination can be validating,” said Sonja Finn of East Liberty’s Dinette, a semifinalist in 2009 and 2010 for Rising Star Chef. “It reaffirmed what I was doing: that I can have a restaurant and cook the food I want to cook and be recognized on a national level.”
At the time, James Beard awards “weren’t on the radar of most Pittsburghers,” she said. “Now I think it’s very different. People pay attention to it.”
The backstory
Named for the culinary luminary who died in 1985, the James Beard Awards were founded in 1991 as a means of recognizing culinary professionals.
Even though the James Beard Foundation is small, with less than $10 million in support and revenue per year, there’s an intrinsic value to the awards because of the scope of judging.
The chef and restaurant awards committee is made up of the country’s most respected publishers and writers in the food world. Eater.com has reported on how the committee is selected and named its 17 members, which include Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema, Mississippi-based writer John T. Edge and Chicago Tribune critic Phil Vettel. Committee members serve from one to three years.
The committee begins the selection process with a national call for entries, which drew nearly 40,000 in 2014. By February, the committee comes up with a list of 20 semifinalists for each category. Then, the ballots are sent out online to three groups: the committee members, 300 previous James Beard restaurant and chef award winners, and 250 established cooks and writers — panelists evenly divided among 10 regions of the country. All votes count equally and are tabulated by the independent accounting firm Lutz and Carr. The five semifinalists with the highest number of votes become the nominees.
Before the May awards event, a second ballot is distributed to the same voting body to select the winners.
From New York to Chicago
This is the first time that the awards ceremony will be held outside New York City. The move to Chicago’s Lyric Opera after 24 years in Manhattan points to a shift away from New York restaurants as the center of the universe.
Eater.com critic Ryan Sutton also noted the importance of Chicago in last week’s article on the restaurant EL Ideas, “No Chef in America Cooks Dinner Quite Like Phillip Foss,” referring to its noted chef.
“Chicago might be America’s most important food city,” Mr. Sutton goes on to say.
It has the Beard awards to back it up. “Chicago has a rich history with the foundation,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel, announcing in April the new location of the awards ceremony. It has delivered “restaurant and chef winners 23 out of 24 years, with more than 40 James Beard Award winners to date.”
The move to Chicago also shows that the foundation appreciates regional cuisine with a unique style or attention to history, as opposed to a New York restaurant concept dropped in a smaller city.
Pittsburgh vs. other cities
Smaller cities have also been on the James Beard radar for awards.
New Orleans, with its complex culinary traditions and a population of 378,000 — slightly larger than Pittsburgh’s 305,000 — has won at least four James Beard awards since 2009, along with multiple semifinalists and finalist nods. Minneapolis and Raleigh, N.C., have also won a handful of restaurant awards. Closer to home, Cleveland’s Michael Symon won a James Beard in 2009.
Cities smaller than Pittsburgh also have become dining destinations, particularly those in the South. Charleston, S.C., had 11 semifinalists this year, while Richmond, Va. (population over 200,000), is just coming into its own. For six years, Richmond had one chef semifinalist; then three of them were nominated this year among semifinalists for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic. None made it to the finals.
“It would be an honor to get an award,” said Pittsburgh’s Bill Fuller, executive chef and partner with Big Burrito group. “I just don’t know if recognition goes outside the food world. That’s not sour grapes, I just don’t know.”
One thing he is sure of is this: To win an award takes some politicking. “I think you have to reach out and talk to people so people know who you are,” he said. “It’s rare to get an award that you don’t try to get.”
Ms. Finn said that with a robust arts community, tech presence, new boutique hotels and restaurants, “Pittsburgh is primed for this. One of us will make it to the finals. It will happen.”