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Here's Everything the Bay Area Won at the 2025 James Beard Awards
The James Beard Foundation (JBF) Awards took over Chicago on Monday, June 16. Restaurants and cooks across the country flocked to the Windy City to crown the new royalty of the food world. This year, the San Francisco Bay Area cleaned up, at least in respect to last year's showing. That is, Northern California punched well above its weight in the media categories, which were announced in a ceremony on Saturday, June 14.
Sadly there were zero restaurant and chef finalists that made the jump onto Monday night's podium. Chefs Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski of The Anchovy Bar, The Progress, and State Bird Provisions were snubbed, one of many New York restaurants taking the win instead. Jacob Brown did not take home the gold on behalf of the Mission's Lazy Bear in the Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service category. Neither Richard Lee of Saison nor Kosuke Tada of Mijoté took home the Best Chef: California award. The final nominee Harbor House Inn lost in the Outstanding Hospitality category, too.
Still, the San Francisco Chronicle 's new-ish food critic Mackenzie Chung Fegan won the JBF's Emerging Voice award. Fegan is a San Francisco-grown writer whose family owns local mainstay Henry's Hunan. Most recently, her writing caused a stir for describing the now-infamous Kellergate wherein Thomas Keller pulled her aside at his French Laundry restaurant to lecture her on his qualms with today's food media.
Preeti Mistry won the Audio Programming award for their podcast Loading Dock Talks. Mistry's restaurant Juhu Beach Club was an Oakland smash hit before closing, landing the chef on an episode of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown in 2015. Their weekly conversation-style podcast features Bay Area chefs and cooks discussing their recipes, politics, and more. 'One of the goals of empire is to dehumanize certain groups of people,' Mistry said while accepting their award. 'That means trans folks. That means Palestinians. That means undocumented immigrants. Storytelling and oral history is such a part of humanizing people.'
Wine country restaurant hero Rogelio Garcia took home a win in the 'Professional and Restaurant' category for the JBF's Book Awards. His debut cookbook Convivir: Modern Mexican Cuisine in California's Wine Country, crowns his ascent through Northern California restaurants, including the now-closed SoMa restaurant Luce and his current job at Michelin star-holding Auro in Calistoga.
Since 1991, the James Beard Awards — the 'Oscars of food' — have remained one of the Big Deals in the food industry. The foundation canceled its programming in 2020 and 2021 after allegations of misbehavior and abuse toward nominees, in addition to a dearth of nominated and winning Black chefs in 2020. In 2022, the organization reorganized after internal audits. Unsurprisingly, given how food moves across the planet, the James Beard Awards' speeches this year skewed toward rejecting the anti-immigrant sentiment spreading throughout the United States.
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. See More: San Francisco Restaurant News
