This celebrated Miami chef could win the award his sister won last year
The James Beard Foundation has announced its 2025 Restaurant and Chef Award nominees, and Chef Nando Chang of Itamae Ao has been nominated in the Best Chef: South category. It's the same category his sister Val Chang won in 2024 for her Peruvian restaurant Maty's in Midtown Miami; Itamae Ao is an intimate omakase counter in the back of the restaurant.
Also nominated in the Best New Bar category is the aperitivo spot ViceVersa, which opened last summer and is known for its aperitivos and pizzas.
In January, the Beard Foundation's semifinalists included Ghee Indian Kitchen in the Outstanding Restaurant category and Café La Trova for Outstanding Bar. Neither made the nominee list. The only Florida restaurant nominated is Ômo by Jônt in Winter Park, which was nominated in the Best New Restaurant category.
Winners will be announced June 16 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
An Itamae takeover of Maty's
Chang, who started the first Itamae restaurant with his sister Val and father Fernando, told the Miami Herald in January that he was thrilled to be nominated, though he wasn't sure a member of his family could win two years in a row.
'I feel like my peers respect the work, and that makes me happy,' he said. 'I'm starting to feel part of the change Miami is going through, and that's all my dad ever wanted, that we live out our dreams.'
Starting April 10, Chang will be temporarily taking over the Maty's space, bringing the original Itamae concept back for about a month. The residency, as they're calling it, will offer some original Itamae favorites, including smoked and grilled fish collars and various makis and nigiris. Itamae Ao will remain open, offering its usual tasting menu Thursday through Saturday, while Itamae will serve dinner from 5-10 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
Itamae Ao was also added to the 2025 Michelin Guide, along with five other area restaurants, in January.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
3 hours ago
Madonna calls on Pope Leo to visit Gaza 'before it's too late'
The singer shared the impassioned post to Instagram on Monday. By 1:04 The musical artist Madonna has called on Pope Leo to travel to Gaza amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis, asking him to "bring your light to the children before it's too late." "As a mother, I cannot bear to watch their suffering. The children of the world belong to everyone. You are the only one of us who cannot be denied entry," Madonna wrote in an Instagram post on Monday. The Vatican has yet to comment on Madonna's post. Pope Leo XIV, who began his papacy in May, is the first American-born pope and the 267th pope of the Catholic Church. He has been outspoken about the ongoing hunger crisis in Gaza. Last week, during a Mass for the Jubilee of Young People in Rome, Pope Leo expressed solidarity for the children who are suffering as a result of Israel's war with Hamas. "In communion with Christ, our peace and hope for the world, we are closer than ever to young people who suffer the most serious evils which are caused by other human beings. We are with the young people of Gaza," he said.
Cosmopolitan
14 hours ago
- Cosmopolitan
Exclusive: Millie Bobby Brown on the power of 'switching off' as she teams up with Crocs for a Cozy campaign
'There's nothing I wear more than Crocs, so this is so exciting for me,' Millie Bobby Brown exclaims. The actress, producer and entrepreneur has teamed up with the shoe giant as the face of its new Cozy campaign. 'I'm a customer,' she says of the partnership. 'So when this came across my desk, I was like 'Oh my god'! Because I'm always in them — I go to work in them, I'm out on the farm in them, and then I run errands in them.' The aforementioned farm is in Georgia, Atlanta, where Brown lives with her husband Jake Bongiovi. However, the English-born star returned to her homeland for Crocs, with the campaign being set against the backdrop of the Loseley Park House & Gardens in the Surrey Hills. Brown says she 'loves' being back in the UK as it means she can spend time with her family, particularly her young nephew. Photographed by Lillie Eiger, the shoot focuses on 'self expression, creativity and who I am' with Brown's dog Winnie even starring alongside her. The cute poodle is earning somewhat of a name for herself, travelling with Brown wherever she goes and even making a cameo alongside her on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon earlier this year. I wonder, how is she adjusting to the limelight? 'Just fine,' says Brown, dryly. 'She's always been a diva, but now more than ever, she really feels the effects of what fame can do — she's always trying to lead me to places where she knows there are going to be paparazzi!' She then jokes she'll be taking 10% of all upcoming brand deals that Winnie manages to secure, of which I'm sure there'll be many (the dog already has an Instagram fan account dedicated to her). But back to the shoes — the collection boasts two faux-fur Classic Clogs, one in mushroom grey and the other in rose quartz pink. The fluffy shoes feature a backstrap with Jibbitz holes for customisation, of which Brown is a 'lifelong' fan of. Feminine beads, flowers and pearls adorn her pairs, with her favourite style unsurprisingly being the pink. Given her and her husband's coordinating fashion history, she's confident that he'll be donning them alongside her. 'Duh! Honestly, real men wear pink in his eyes,' she laughs down the phone. 'He's the same as me,' she says of their mutual love of Crocs. 'Ease and comfortability is key.' This feels like an apt statement given the Cozy title of the campaign — but how does someone as famous as Brown manage to unwind? 'I just like to spend time with my animals and my husband. We like to grab dinner and take long walks and [are] very romantic.' With the help of Bongiovi, Brown says she finds it 'very easy' to disconnect, and believes 'it's important to switch off' from the demands of her career. Speaking of which, Brown made headlines earlier this year when she posted a video to her Instagram account calling out journalists for criticising her appearance as she has grown up in the spotlight (she started acting when she was just 10 years old). In the powerful speech, she branded her treatment by the media as 'bullying', before saying: 'the fact that adult writers are spending their time dissecting my face, my body, my choices, it's disturbing'. It was a brave move that inspired thousands of her young fans across the world. Reflecting upon the video's impact, she says:'I hate to be so cliche and generic, but just know that being yourself is enough. Conforming to whatever environment is around you — like society, school, work, social media or whatever is provoking you — please don't change yourself." Brown's words sound like they come from experience. She says: 'If you tend to do what other people are doing, you get bored of it — jumping on the bandwagon gets so boring and ultimately, that [one particular thing] expires and then you have to go and jump onto the next thing, and it's just so exhausting.' Her advice is that 'it's truly never worth it' and she firmly believes that 'being yourself and marching to the beat of your own drum is so much more fun and liberating'. Now there's a sentiment we can get behind. With the final series of Stranger Things dropping on Netflix at the end of November, Brown will be saying goodbye to the role of Eleven, the character that catapulted her into global fame. She's also reported to be working on a film adaptation of her own novel, Nineteen Steps, which she'll both produce and star in. Alongside founding her own clothing, beauty and coffee lines, it's difficult to believe she's just 21 years old. 'Staying true to who I am' is clearly the key to her success — and with that mindset, she's got the world at her (pink, fluffy, Crocs-clad) feet. Crocs' Cozy collection is out now. Rebecca Jane Hill is the Senior Fashion Editor at Cosmopolitan UK. She has previously contributed to publications including Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Refinery29, The Face, Glamour and Stylist. She started her own magazine, Sister, in 2012 whilst at university. Focused around feminism, fashion and culture, it went on to produce 12 globally stocked print issues, as well as countless events and partnerships. She closed the magazine in 2023. Rebecca has been an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion since 2018, where she teaches on the Fashion Journalism course. She is a passionate second-hand shopper and is constantly on the lookout for new design talent.
Los Angeles Times
17 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
An L.A. Craftsman home channels 'In the Mood for Love' and the art of the everyday
Outside of Paul Chan's Silver Lake studio, the rush of L.A. turns tranquil as pineapple guava plants brush against a wall in the warm breeze. Chan opens the wooden gate and ushers me into a sanctuary of his creation: a yard flanked by a tall tree, a worn picnic bench and a Chinese porcelain table and stools. In the shadow of the porcelain seats, as if placed by gnomes, sit four children's chairs. Each just the size of my hand, the soft wooden chairs lie strewn around a stack of bricks. Here, in this miniature teatime, I can imagine that at any moment, children will come running back to play while adults laugh from the porch. There is a sense of familiarity in the oak floorboards and the slanted sunlight within Chan's thoughtfully designed space. The Hong Kong-born architect opened the studio, Days of Being, this year, as a place for visitors to rent and artists to have a place to create and recharge. This fall, he is also launching his first handmade furniture line, Domestic Ritual, designed by Chan and constructed by collaborator Jeremy Kim. Together the pieces weave together his upbringing, a life in New York and his journey to L.A. As I walked into the house for the first time, incense and woodsy aromas filled the open space. Looking above, I saw no ceiling — only imperfect, exposed beams holding the roof up. These airy, continuous structures are core to his architecture: sliding shelves, curtain-covered doorways, openings peeking into another place until little is hidden. In his studio's design, Chan wears his heart on his sleeve. When I took on this house, I was thinking, how can we highlight components of it, from the ceiling to the roof to the joists, as if it were an art piece? The house was in pretty bad shape when I found it. I see architecture as a living thing, and this was like seeing a puppy that was not being taken care of. I wondered, what happened here? I saw that the house had great bones, beams and trusses, but it was just in disrepair. In a way, I felt a responsibility to restore it and honor its original intent, but make it personal. It's a 1920s Craftsman home, a very L.A.-style home. The Craftsman house was created to say, can we strip a house down to its basics and make something beautiful for the common person? Before, with Art Nouveau, beautiful homes were only mansions for the rich. The Craftsman was the antithesis. And that spirit is what I wanted to tap into as I reworked this space. I think we live in an era where, as a society, we try to tackle hard work with AI and efficiency, but I think that makes me want to instead find the soul of something and actually take time for that. There's a lot to be said about handmade things, which started as a necessity but got replaced by fast production. To go back to that is to ask, how can we make everyday things artful again? Then I thought, how can I give this to someone on the object scale? Handmade furniture is a way to give someone a taste of the artful, to give them a place to curate their objects and their history within each piece. In Asian culture, there are lots of shrines in homes, ancestral shrines with pictures of grandmas and candles. But instead, we can create shrines to what we love with our objects. Each of us has our own trinkets that we collect over the years. I want a place for people to put that on display. Wong Kar Wai is a big inspiration in how I approached this home. He would make things up in his films as he would go. There's improvisation. The cadence of that, I love. His films aren't trying to say anything. It's just a moment that happened, and he captured it in a very artful, beautiful way. Part of what I resonate with is the repetition of small gestures. In 'In the Mood for Love,' there's a relationship between the characters played by Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung. They would both be going to get food and pass each other in the staircase. This was a repeated narrative of the enclosed space forcing them to pass each other by. As an architect, that got me really thinking about, how do people make their coffee everyday? What is the routine of someone in this home? Someone gets up, goes to the bathroom, brushes their teeth, makes coffee, and all of those things I think about as I approach a design. Life is an accumulation of these small moments. How do we interact with each other because of the space we're in? I want to create a space that makes you feel like this is your sanctuary. I almost see the role of an architect as a kind of director: behind the scenes, setting up the sets and allowing life to unfold within these spaces. I also think of it as a conversation. I am speaking, when I'm designing this, to the original architect. As I build, I'm having a conversation with the architect 100 years before me. I understand his decisions and why he did things a certain way. I get to come in and build off of his choices. Imagine, a hundred years later, someone else will build off of me. I leave this sentence here for the next person to complete.
