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News Mon May 09 2011
Quiet Night for Chicago at the 2011 James Beard Foundation Awards
Lettuce Entertain You's Richard Melman finally won Restaurateur of the Year at the 2011 James Beard Foundation Awards after six nominations. It's a bright spot in an otherwise quiet year for Chicago's restaurant industry, despite plenty of nominations.
The Best Chef: Great Lakes region was dominated by local chefs but was won by the chef at Ann Arbor, Michigan's Zingerman's Roadhouse. North Pond's Bruce Sherman was left standing for the fifth time. Mindy Segal was also a five-time also-ran in the Outstanding Pastry Chef category.
At Friday's media awards night, Michael Gebert and Julia Thiel won the award for Best Multimedia Feature for their Key Ingredient feature in the Reader, while the Tribune's Monica Eng lost in the Environment, Food Politics, and Policy category to Carl Safina's "Sea Change" in EatingWell. Gebert tells his story of attending the awards ceremony over on Sky Full of Bacon.
Perhaps it's just part of a cycle. Chicago did well at the 2010 Beard Awards, on both the journalism and cooking side. In 2009 Chicago brought home just two awards, while 2008 saw the rise of Grant Achatz and Alinea, as well as several other winners. So maybe next year will be our year once again. (And hopefully finally the year for Sherman and Segal.)
