Tonight, the restaurant industry convened in Chicago for the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards. The finalists, announced in March, included Seattle’s Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi for Outstanding Chef, the Walrus and the Carpenter for Outstanding Restaurant, and Mutsuko Soma of Kamonegi for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific.
Although no locals ultimately took home hardware, the Pacific Northwest was well represented with six finalists from Washington and Oregon.
This year, the James Beard Foundation implemented tasting panels to visit each finalist, part of a large-scale overhaul designed to build more equity into the awards process. Here’s the complete list of this year’s finalists and winners (in bold).
Outstanding Restaurateur WINNER: Chris Bianco,
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