James Beard Foundation announces 2025 media award nominees, next cohort of Taste America chefs
The nominees for its book, broadcast media and journalism awards celebrate digital and traditional media — radio, television broadcasts, podcasts, documentaries, online sites, social media — covering food and beverage topics published or self-published in 2024.
Selvam was nominated for the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award for his work published in 2024, including an article titled 'Namasteak, USA.'
Selvam said that story in particular was a significant one for him, highlighting the growing South Asian food scene in Chicago.
'I've been quietly doing stories about South Asian food for some time, and it's kind of my mile mark, and for that particular story, I think it was kind of about time,' Selvam told the Tribune. '(As we saw) so many Chicago restaurants and chefs that were popping up, becoming the epicenter. And not a lot of people consider Chicago when they think of South Asian 一 and there are (South Asian chefs) who have contributed to the cultural fabric of the city for years, but have not necessarily gotten the recognition for whatever reasons.'
The James Beard nomination was a first for Selvam, who joked about the early days of working for Eater, where they were paid a flat rate of $25 per story, regardless of the complexity or sources involved.
Winners will be honored at a ceremony June 14 at the Columbia College Chicago Student Center.
The Tribune covets two nominees and one James Beard Award winner on its Dining staff. Reporter Ahmed Ali Akbar received a James Beard Award in 2022 for Feature Reporting. Last year, Tribune food critic Louisa Kung Liu Chu was one of three James Beard Foundation finalists for the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Criticism Award.
A few days before the foundation announced the media awards, it revealed the 2025-2026 lineup of TasteTwenty chefs, its annual selection of 'ones to watch' in the industry.
The cohort includes Jacqueline Hernandez of Bar Sótano, the Rick Bayless-owned lounge in River North.
Hernandez will represent Chicago throughout the national Taste America series. Other cities being represented include: Asheville, North Carolina, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami Nashville, Tennessee, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sante Fe, New Mexico, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
'Each chef of the TasteTwenty cohort is chosen not only for their exceptional culinary talent but also for their meaningful contributions beyond the kitchen. They're champions of positive change — from investing in their teams, supporting sustainable agriculture, advocating for a more resilient food system, and more,' the foundation said in a release. 'These chefs represent the future of American dining.'
The cohort is part of the Foundation's ongoing commitment to identifying and elevating the outstanding chefs who are at the forefront of American food culture, said Clare Reichenbach, chief executive officer of the James Beard Foundation.
In February, the James Beard Foundation announced the winners of its America's Classics award, which recognizes six 'locally owned restaurants that have timeless appeal' across the country. Among this year's honorees is the oldest Black-owned barbecue restaurant in Chicago, Lem's Bar-B-Q.
The foundation also released its annual list of semifinalists from across the United States. The final winners in the restaurant and chef Awards categories will be announced on June 16, during a ceremony at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
The April 2 announcement included nominees for Outstanding Restaurateur, Best New Restaurant, and the regional Best Chef awards, as well as finalists for three new categories: Best New Bar, Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service and Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service.
Among the finalists vying for its coveted Restaurant and Chef awards are five Chicago chefs and restaurants, including first-time nominees Galit and Kumiko.
Kumiko was nominated for Outstanding Bar, Galit for Outstanding Restaurant and three Chicago finalists are in the Best Chef: Great Lakes category: Thai Dang of HaiSous; Chris Jung and Erling Wu-Bower of Maxwells Trading; and Noah Sandoval of Oriole.
The James Beard Awards are considered to be among the nation's most prestigious honors for the culinary industry. This year will also commemorate the 35th anniversary of the awards and celebrate what the foundation calls the 'transformative role the awards have played in honoring culinary excellence and shaping the evolution of American food culture.'
Last year, Chicago saw just one local winner at the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards, with Lula Cafe winning for Outstanding Hospitality.
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Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Chicago Tribune
Column: The Tribune's film critic Michael Phillips says so long for now
Well. Goodbye for now. The Tribune has eliminated the position of film critic, as part of a newsroom reorganization. This leaves me with two options: stick around for reassignment or take a buyout. I'm voting buyout. I'm opting in for opting out. After six newspapers in Minneapolis; Dallas; San Diego; St. Paul, Minneapolis; Los Angeles and Chicago, and 41 fulltime years in this beautiful, vanishing subset of journalism, it feels right. Forty-one years, plus six years of freelancing my way through college. Call it 47. Forty-seven years of writing, editing, gobbling research like the grad student I never was; 47 years of making my peace at the keyboard (or waging another micro-war against cliches) when faced with one more deadline. Nearly a half-century of putting work ahead of everything else, too often at everything else's expense. So now, for me, it's time for the shock of the new. The new to be named later. Through fat and lean and thick and thin and, to quote Mel Brooks, through thin, the Tribune has been good to me. They took a chance on me back in 2002 and I'm grateful. The place has brought me so much to love in this city. Plus the paper underwrote 10 trips to the Cannes Film Festival, with my name on the festival badge, once upon a time. I arrived from the Los Angeles Times as the Tribune's new theater critic. This was the result of a lengthy interview process for the finalists for the post vacated by the irreplaceable Richard Christiansen. Bizarrely, all the other finalists turned the job down, with regrets. Perhaps none of us could get our heads around the workload established so selflessly by Christiansen, and in my case I wanted enough life in my life to be there for my son, then one year old. And then Tribune editors did something sort of amazing. They agreed to fill the theater critic position with two, not one: me and Chris Jones, the latter now the paper's editorial page editor as well as Tribune and New York Daily News theater critic. In an overwhelmingly white male newsroom, there we were, two more white males. I think about that a lot. There's an Arthur Miller quote that gets a lot of reuse here at the Tribune. It's etched into a wall inside our former tower's lobby: 'A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.' Right now, any newspaper with an interest in staying urgent and relevant and alert is getting an earful of a fractious nation. Making sense of these nerve-wracking times, and everything filmmakers, artists, writers, creators create out of the din, amounts to more than a routine profession. Or a bottom line. I got paid for my first opinion at 17, which was ridiculous but educational. At my college paper, the Minnesota Daily, I knew I wasn't writing like myself yet. I wrote about movies, plays, performers and artists like a combination of critics I admired. Young actors often do the same; they learn by doing, and by borrowing, and in time by letting the false front fall away. Every text, email, letter and phone call the Tribune readers have sent my way, be it out of agreement, frustration or just plain kindness — nothing I ever wrote meant as much as what you sent, and I mean it. The good fortune so many of us fell into back then, editing or generating arts coverage, is a dream now, a dream of a less precarious era of journalism. My first fulltime job was arts editor of the Twin Cities weekly City Pages. What was I doing? I didn't know what I was doing. I just did as much of everything as I could see and hear and watch. In the Twin Cities in the '80s, you could catch Ella Fitzgerald one night and The Replacements the next. You could marvel at some of the riskiest, most experimental regional theater in American history, right there on stage at the Guthrie Theater, under the artistic directorship of Liviu Ciulei and Garland Wright. You could have your atoms rearranged by Abel Gance's silent epic 'Napoleon' at the Walker Art Center. All in the name of work, and learning, and joy. My Tribune gigs — four years on theater, 20 on movies — were the best, toughest, most rewarding years of my professional life. Getting to know Roger and Chaz Ebert led to me filling in for Roger, when he took ill, and then co-hosting 'At the Movies' opposite Richard Roeper and then A.O. Scott. (The white man parade never really ended.) I met Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies when he came to town with Jane Powell for a screening of 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,' and then a while later, there I was, somehow, introducing a hundred or so films on TCM. I used to say it as a joke, though now it's truer than I realized: TCM may be the one entity in American culture holding this damn country together. From here, I'll continue to show up on the long-running 'Filmspotting' podcast, broadcast on WBEZ-FM, whenever the hosts Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen see fit. Over on Classical WFMT, I'll continue my weekly segments for the film music program 'Soundtrack,' which I adore. Next month I plan to begin my 11th year as advisor and mentor of the University of Illinois College of Media Roger Ebert Fellowship, which is the grad school I never knew but now I know. It has the added benefit of keeping Roger's spirit in my heart and in my work as an editor and a colleague. If my luck holds out, the unknown unknowns ahead include new colleagues I value as much as I do my fellow Tribune screens chronicler Nina Metz and my editor Doug George. They care, and they're pros, at a time when devaluing expertise is national political policy. It is of course bittersweet, at least for me, to see the two remaining Chicago daily newspaper film critic positions go away like . Yet Chicago's film exhibition, curation, production and non-daily coverage, of every sort, remains a beacon for much of the rest of the country. And more importantly, for Chicago. So. Goodbye for now, as the Sondheim song from the film 'Reds' put it. Thank you for reading. Keep seeking out the critical voices that make your own perceptions a little sharper, your interest in something you've seen — and something you may see tomorrow night — a little keener. For now, I'll enjoy this peculiar new feeling, captured best by another song lyric, this one from Irving Berlin's 'No Strings':
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in Chicago History: The Beatles play two shows at Comiskey Park, and scarcely a note was heard
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 20, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) How George Halas' columns for the Chicago Tribune, a field goal and a charity game helped the Chicago Bears prove their legitimacy in 19351948: The National League champion Chicago Cardinals beat the College All-Stars 28-0 in front of 101,220 fans at Soldier Field. Chicago White Sox pitchers have thrown 20 no-hitters since 1902 — including 3 perfect games. Relive them all here.1957: Bob Keegan — at 37 — became the oldest player to throw a no-hitter for the Chicago White Sox. The Sox beat the Washington Senators 6-0 in the second game of a doubleheader at Comiskey Park. 1961: The international press called it 'a stunning upset.' Three American teenagers scored a Wightman Cup victory at Saddle & Cycle Club over veteran British tennis stars Ann Haydon, Cristine Truman, Angela Mortimer and Deidre Catt. Billie Jean King on today's tennis, the media and a new play at Chicago Shakespeare about her lifeThe American teens were Karen Hantze and Justina Bricka, both 18, and bouncy 17-year-old Billie Jean Moffitt, who spurred on her own game by muttering 'Come on, baby' to herself. Moffitt later played under her married name, King. The American teens had lost to the same Britons at Wimbledon earlier in the year. They said that playing the established British stars before huge crowds helped them gain experience and confidence for the Wightman matches in Chicago. 1965: After arriving quietly at Chicago's Midway Airport, the Beatles played a day-night doubleheader at Comiskey Park. More than 50,000 incessantly screaming fans drowned out the Beatles during the 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. shows. John Lennon, then 24, was not annoyed. 'They pay good prices to get in (top tickets, $5.50). Who are we to say whether or not they should scream?' A solid line of officers sat shoulder to shoulder, with their backs to the infield, to prevent teens from taking second base, where the Beatles performed on a plywood bandstand. Paul McCartney singing 'I'm Down' pumped up the volume of the screamfest. Based on that alone, Tribune reviewer Will Leonard surmised that this was 'easily the artistic success of the evening.' The take at the Comiskey gate was an estimated $150,000 to $160,000, compared with the year before at the Chicago Amphitheatre, when the Beatles had a reported $30,000 in ticket sales. After the concert the Beatles stopped at Margie's Candies in Bucktown for ice cream, recalled owner Peter Poulos Jr. 'They sat at the back booth and ordered Atomic Busters (banana splits standing up). They began singing, John was standing on the table. The place was packed. They stayed about an hour.' 1976: Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla led a group of bishops on a tour of the United States that included Chicago. He returned in October 1979 — then known as Pope John Paul II. 2014: The Chicago Cubs won 2-0 over the San Francisco Giants after 4½ innings and a 4-hour, 34-minute rain delay when the grounds crew mishandled the tarp. The Giants appealed the ruling, won, but lost 2-1 a day later. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Axios
2 days ago
- Axios
Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips takes buyout
Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips has accepted a buyout from the paper, ending his 24-year run reviewing film and theater. Why it matters: For the first time since the 1950s, the Chicago Tribune no longer has a chief film critic. Phillips follows Richard Roeper, who left the Sun-Times earlier this year. What they're saying:"My options were to stick around for a newsroom reassignment to be named later, or take the buyout. I went with the buyout," Phillips wrote on social media. "I've had a ball in a great city working with people who care, and writing about a Platonic ideal of a great city's devotion to cinema, and to every artistic realm imaginable," Phillips wrote. Flashback: Phillips started as a theater critic at the paper. He gradually moved over to reviewing films, replacing Michael Wilmington, who had replaced Gene Siskel. Between the lines: The move to eliminate Phillips' position follows the industry trend to cut back on arts and culture reporting, specifically film reviews. While Phillips and Roeper are hardly the only cuts at local newspapers, their departures hit home in Chicago because of the national success of film critics Siskel and Roger Ebert. The two paired up to create the television program "At the Movies," which ran for several years. In 2009, Phillips was tapped to co-host "At the Movies." The syndicated show ended in 2010. The intrigue: Phillips said Tribune management was eliminating his position as critic, but the company did not respond to Axios' request for confirmation.
