The nominees are out for this year’s James Beard Awards—aka the foodie Oscars—and the painfully slow Twitter announcements revealed a pretty strong showing for our area.
For the fourth year in a row, tapas king José Andrés is up for one of the most high-profile awards, Outstanding Chef, in honor of his six-seat restaurant Minibar. He’s up against much of the same competition from last year—San Francisco’s Gary Danko and Charlie Phan and Los Angeles chef Suzanne Goin—plus Chicago’s Paul Kahan.
Komi’s Johnny Monis has moved out of the Rising Star Chef category he’s been nominated in for the past three years and is now up for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic. He’s joined by Peter Pastan of Obelisk and 2 Amys and Cathal Armstrong (Restaurant Eve), who, with his fifth nomination in a row, is inching close to Lucci territory.
In the journalism category, the Washington Post is in the running for best Food Section, the award the paper won last year. And Post food section writer Tim Carman is up for columns written during his previous job at Washington City Paper.
The awards will be announced Monday, May 9, at a New York ceremony hosted by Gail Simmons and Ted Allen.
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Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
