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Eater
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Eater
Yotaka Martin of Phoenix Restaurant Lom Wong Wins James Beard Award
is a cities manager at Eater overseeing editorial operations for city sites in the Southern California/Southwest and Texas regions. She earned a master's degree in multidisciplinary writing at the University of Southern California. The James Beard Foundation Awards were held tonight, June 16, and Phoenix, Arizona walked away with one winner. In April, the James Beard Foundation revealed Arizona's two finalists, whittled down from a semifinalists list that spanned 12 categories: Crystal Kass, of Valentine in Phoenix, received an Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker nomination for her genre-bending desserts — think an apricot tostada with burnt honey cremeux and sweet salsa macha — that speak to the soul of the Southwest. Cat Cox of Country Bird Bakery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, took home that award. The James Beard Awards, often considered 'the Oscars of food,' are among the most prestigious awards in the food and hospitality industry. Each year, the James Beard Foundation restaurants, bars, and hospitality professionals in categories like Outstanding Restaurant, Best Chef, and Best New Chef. This year's awards added three brand-new categories: Best New Bar, Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service, and Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service. The first James Beard Awards ceremony was held in 1991, when chefs like Rick Bayless, Nancy Silverton, and Wolfgang Puck walked away as winners. In recent years, the foundation has been under increased scrutiny after canceling its programming in 2020 and 2021 due to misbehavior and abuse allegations against nominated chefs, and a lack of nominated and winning Black chefs among the categories. In response, the James Beard Foundation conducted an internal audit to make its voting processes more inclusive and equitable before returning in 2022. The awards have also shifted the Best Chef category to a regional model to better recognize the diversity and depth of talent. Get the full list of James Beard Award winners from across the country on Eater. Chef Yotaka Martin, of Lom Wong in Phoenix, holds up a freshly caught fish by the tail. Lom Wong Disclosure: Some Vox Media staff members are part of the voting body for the James Beard Awards. Eater is partnering with the James Beard Foundation to livestream the awards in 2025. All editorial content is produced independently of the James Beard Foundation.
Forbes
01-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Tulsa Baker On A Mission Wins 2025 James Beard Award
Cat Cox, winner of the 2025 James Beard Pastry Award, in front of Country Bird Café in Tulsa, which ... More specializes in sourdough. Cat Cox describes Country Bird Bakery, which she opened in 2022 in her hometown of Tulsa, Ok., as an 'artisanal sourdough bakery.' Cox earned the 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker, which one might expect a baker from New York City or San Francisco to win. But Cox is a gifted baker and a woman on a mission. Cox, who is 42-years-old, defines that mission as 'Support local farmers. Connect community. Create a space that I want to work in and where my employees are happy. And provide delicious baked goods that utilize whole grains.' She explains that sourdough involves a 3-day fermentation process that makes bread more nutritious and more easily digestible. Ironically, she aimed to create a bakery that could thrive in San Francisco or N.Y.C. Bootstrapping the Bakery When she opened Country Bird Bakery three years ago, she did so on a shoestring budget. She tapped some savings she received from selling her house during Covid, helping her buy a deck oven. Then she raised some funds from family and friends that helped acquire the convection oven and spiral mixer, and bought used kitchen equipment via Facebook. But Cox owns it all now. Cox says Country Bird Bakery uses 'local and regional, stone-milled flour as well as local produce, dairy and eggs.' Some of its specialty items include its pecan, twice-baked croissant, which is like an almond croissant but uses local pecans from Knight Pecan Farm, and its country loaf, which consists of 100% local stone-milled sourdough. Its drip coffee stems from Coracle Coffee, a local Tulsa roaster. It also offers an array of sandwiches including focaccia including vegetarian frittata, ham 'n jams, and Camembert baguettes. Dedicated to furthering the art of baking, she teaches sourdough workshops to the public, which can accommodate up to 15 students at once. But Country Bird Bakery is very down-home and casual. Indeed, Cox says it really doesn't have any seating, other than a bar at the window with 4 stools. It's located between two Tulsa areas, the Pearl district and the Kendal Whittier district. Very Limited Hours Moreover, it's open extremely limited hours. It's open every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and also a couple of Thursday's a month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It also sells wholesale breads to several local restaurants such as Farm Bar, Cow and Cabbage and Malfi and Coffee @ Heirloom, and desserts to Tina's, a local bar. But the retail shop generates 90% of revenue with 5% each for wholesale and the baking workshops. Why open for so few hours a week? Cox replies that it's limited by its cramped 1,000 square foot space that has no walk-in refrigerators. Nonetheless, it's profitable and reinvests its profits back into the business and buying new equipment. She acknowledges that unlike most entrepreneurs, money isn't her driving force. 'Owning a bakery is a service to community, and it's hard work because baking usually starts at 3 a.m.,' she explains. Cox is so understated in marketing that she says she 'has never spent any money on advertising.' She created a strong reputation as a chef when she cooked at Living Kitchen Farm, Dairy and Farm Bar, and then depended mostly on word of mouth when she debuted her bakery. Buy Tulsa It relies on local farms as her main suppliers, which Cox refers to as the bedrock of Oklahoma. If not, we'd be relying on big corporate farms, that are less responsive to local needs, she suggests. She named her bakery Country Bird as an homage to her grandmother, who resided in a hamlet in Southwestern Oklahoma. On a visit to another small Ok. town, Cox spied a tattered awning that said Country Bird, which was the perfect name for her bakery. Cox was raised in Tulsa, but attended art school in Kansas City, became a studio assistant in the Washington, D.C. area, and then moved to NYC to work at a papermaking studio Dieu Donne. Then she settled in Marfa, Tx. when the stock market crashed, and began working in kitchens. She returned to Tulsa 11 years ago. Asked to describe its target audience, Cox says that it consists of mostly regulars, who are middle-aged folks, young families, and also people in their twenties via TikTok. But with the recent publicity emanating from the James Beard Award, it's been attracting more tourists than before. Country Bird Bakery's staff consists of 6 bakers, who are in production, and 3 of them also work up front helping guests when we open, and one serves as part-time dishwasher. Cox acknowledges that winning the James Beard Best Pastry Chef award is prestigious and is grateful but admits it can be 'intimidating.' And it raises customer expectations. Asked how it can be used to generate more revenue, she replies 'that remains to be seen.' Opening a second bakery in Tulsa would be tricky because there's a small pool of talented pastry chefs to draw from. Asked the keys to the continued success of her bakery, Cox replied, 1) My team, 2) Commitment to sourcing incredible produce from the local farms, 3) Community support.
Eater
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
This Bakery Just Won Tulsa's First James Beard Award
One moment, Cat Cox was sitting in an opulent banquet hall full of the most decorated names in food and beverage, just grateful to be sharing airspace with icons in the business. The next, she was on stage, accepting the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef, before getting whisked off to a refrigerated truck for a walk-in interview with Eli Sussman, who asked her how it all felt. It felt like a lot. Cox was taking home the industry's most prestigious award for her relatively new business, Country Bird Bakery (which she describes as a 'Euro-country bakery: European inspiration, with Dolly Parton vibes'). But she had also notched the first ever James Beard win for her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. That put her among an infinitesimally small club of Oklahoma winners that includes legends like chefs Florence Jones Kemp, Andrew Black, and Rick Bayless (who all won from Oklahoma City). Suddenly, Country Bird was no longer just a small-batch bakery with a cult following, but the city's most validated answer to a consistent question among outsiders: 'Is there even a food scene in Tulsa?' (Those of us who live here know the answer is a resounding yes.) 'I thought, There's no way this tiny little space in Tulsa that's only been open for two and a half years would win ,' Cox says. 'It's not just an award for me and my team. It's an award for Tulsa. I wouldn't have been standing up there without the people who are so dedicated to our business, and who show up and draw attention.' And show up supporters do. The bakery, which is open Saturdays and every other Thursday, can only fit a snippet of the line of bleary-eyed patrons, which regularly stretches around the building like an SNL parody. With just four small refrigerators and one bread oven, the team turns out roughly 1,500 pastries and 150 loaves during a typical service. Savvy Tulsans know to drive by to see when the line is getting shorter and text friends near the front to snag an extra something. The effort is worth it for cinnamon sumac knots, butterscotch blondies, cacio e pepe monkey bread, rye chocolate chip cookies as big as your face, and pecan twice-baked croissants that take four days to make (perfected by Country Bird baker Abby Burton). The shop has especially become known for hand-churned butter and sourdough breads made with Oklahoma-grown grain, as well as items featuring garden-grown produce, local eggs, and buttermilk made in-house. This commitment to featuring the terroir of the heartland is as much a creative choice as an ethical one. Take the Farmer's Danish: a shell that's perfectly flaky, buttery, crispy, and juicy, stuffed with a rotating roster of local produce like corn, okra, or tomatoes. 'You can see right inside it what we got that week. It's like an edible substrate, or a painting, and showcases the farmers so well,' Cox says. Cox is a lifelong baker, and though her 15-year restaurant career started in Marfa, Texas, she too is a product of Tulsa. After returning to her hometown, she took workshops with bakers like Sarah Owens and Tara Jensen, ran a seminal bread program at Living Kitchen Farm & Dairy (co-owned by Cox's fellow James Beard nominee, chef Lisa Becklund, along with Linda Ford), and eventually launched her own classes. After a Thanksgiving break-up left Cox with loaves to get rid of, she launched her first independent bread sale from her porch. In 2022, an Instagram follower in nearby Bartlesville messaged her about a secondhand bread oven, which became the earliest inkling of Country Bird. 'I love that I could be part of her jumping off,' says Becklund, who, in a full circle moment, attended the awards alongside Cox as a finalist in the Outstanding Chef category. 'But she did the work. She did the research and had the passion. I love seeing her success.'Tulsa has been building momentum toward a Beards win for a few years now. The city has produced at least 15 nominees since 2022, as creative restaurants have pushed hard to evolve the local palate — not so much 'elevating' it, but expanding what's possible in a place like this. 'Tulsa's food scene has really come a long way,' Cox says. 'When I first moved back 11 years ago, people would rave about a restaurant, and I'd go try it and be like, really ? Now there are restaurants I recommend to people wholeheartedly.' She rattles off places like Il Seme, Cow and Cabbage, India Palace, Mandarin Taste, Tina's (which serves Cox's fried pie), Coffee at Heirloom, Ava June, Farm Bar, and the new food truck startup Old Dog. 'A lot of people from the coasts have moved inland, and I think their expectations for food have been higher, and so they have allowed the chefs and restaurateurs here to improve,' Becklund says. 'The other thing that cannot be overstated is that Instagram opened up the world to chefs and cooks in isolated areas. I think it kind of shut down the gatekeepers.' But the city's success can't be attributed to outsiders. Thanks to its agrarian roots, Tulsa is imbued with a certain kind of 'prairie populism.' Chefs like Becklund are happy to help the next generation succeed, while locals are eager to support homegrown concepts, even as they break molds. 'I really think it's about the heart,' Cox says, evoking a definition of 'heartland' that describes much more than Tulsa's place on the map. 'In Tulsa, people are attracted to that feeling of heart and drive, and making something and putting it out there to be shared and seen.' Cox has felt empowered by support from her neighbors since bringing home the city's first James Beard Award, but the moment also comes with a certain weight. 'You know, the further up people build you, the further down you have to go,' she says. 'It does feel like a lot of pressure, and I'm just a human.' She doesn't know any other chefs who've brought home their city's first James Beard, but if she did, she says, 'I think I'd ask them, 'How long is it going to feel like this?'' Even before the win, demand was overwhelming. 'Anytime we get any little bit of media, like after the New York Times mention, and after the [James Beard] nomination process, we get an influx of new people,' she says. New visitors might feel frustrated after traveling to the bakery to try an item, only to find it sold out. 'They might not necessarily know what we're all about. And we're not for everybody; we can't be, and we shouldn't be.' So far, she's navigated the influx of attention with equal parts excitement and trepidation. 'Right now, we're just focused on maintaining our quality.' While some chefs' first instinct might be to scale, Cox's is to wait and see. In a culture that too often insists that business owners receive demand with open arms, scrambling to create more supply, the tiny Country Bird store itself keeps the team in check with real production limitations. 'It's never about making more,' she says. 'It's always been about making better — and that expectation is what gives me anxiety.' To the locals who worry this might be the end of their access to Country Bird, Cox encourages them to be patient, and points to online ordering as a way around the line. 'It's going to be hard for a minute,' she says. 'But it's not always going to be like this.' Cox is right — in more ways than one. With the way Tulsa's dining scene is going, Country Bird won't be the only James Beard winner for long. She's already looking forward to seeing what 'creative, fun, scrappy things pop up' in the next couple years. In the meantime, after a well-earned summer break, Cox will buckle down again. 'While working on the farm, Lisa and I used to say, 'The reward for hard work is just more hard work.' I've been thinking about that a lot this week.' See More: Chefs Oklahoma Travel Guides
