Christina Nguyen is an American chef and restaurateur. In 2024, she won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Midwest.
Nguyen's parents, who both grew up in Saigon, Vietnam, immigrated separately in 1975 to the United States as refugees. [1] [2] [3] They met as students at the University of Minnesota. [3] Nguyen has a brother. [3]
Nguyen opened a food truck, Hola Arepa, in 2014. [2] She opened a bricks-and-mortar restaurant also called Hola Arepa, which serves Venezuelan street food, in Minneapolis. [1] [4]
Nguyen opened Hai Hai in Minneapolis, which serves Southeast Asian street foods, in the late 2010s. [1] [5] The restaurant had previously been a night club. [6] [3] National Geographic said it had 'rocketed to prominence as a "new-school” Asian-inspired restaurant. Its menu is almost entirely unlike any of its peers—it’s filled with under-the-radar dishes you can’t order anywhere else, and evolves constantly'. [7]
Nguyen won the James Beard James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2024. [1] She had been nominated for the award several times and had been a finalist for the award previously. [1] [2]
Nguyen is married to Birk Grudem. [6]
Tiffani Faison is an American celebrity chef and restaurateur. She is based in Boston, has served as a judge on Food Network's television series Chopped, and is a four-time James Beard Award Finalist for Best Chef: Northeast. She was the winner of Season 3 of Tournament of Champions and was named Boston's Best Chef by Boston Magazine in 2022. She was one of two finalists on the first season of Bravo's reality show Top Chef, where she finished second to Harold Dieterle.
Andrew Scott Zimmern is an American chef, restaurateur, television and radio personality, director, producer, businessman, food critic, and author. Zimmern is the co-creator, host, and consulting producer of the Travel Channel television series Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,Bizarre Foods America, Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations, Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre World, Dining with Death, The Zimmern List, and Andrew Zimmern's Driven by Food, as well as the Food Network series The Big Food Truck Tip. For his work on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, he was presented the James Beard Foundation Award four times: in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2017. Zimmern hosts a cooking webseries on YouTube, Andrew Zimmern Cooks. Another show, What's Eating America, premiered on MSNBC in 2020.
Gavin Kaysen is executive chef and owner of Spoon and Stable, Bellecour Bakery, Demi, Socca, and Mara all in Minneapolis. He received the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2018. Previous to his move to Minneapolis, he served as Executive Chef and Director of Culinary Operations for Daniel Boulud in New York City, over seeing Café Boulud in Palm Beach, Toronto and New York City.
Stephanie Izard is an American chef and television personality best known as the first female chef to win Bravo's Top Chef, taking the title during its fourth season. She is the co-owner and executive chef of three award-winning Chicago restaurants, Girl and the Goat, Little Goat, and Duck Duck Goat, and opened her first restaurant, Scylla as chef-owner at the age of 27. Izard received a James Beard Foundation Award for "Best Chef: Great Lakes" in 2013 for her work at Girl and the Goat. She has made a number of appearances on Top Chef since her win, both as a guest judge on subsequent seasons and as a participant in Top Chef Duels. In 2017, Izard competed in the Food Network series Iron Chef Gauntlet, where she overall defeated chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, and Masaharu Morimoto to obtain the title of Iron Chef.
Momofuku is a culinary brand established by chef David Chang in 2004 with the opening of Momofuku Noodle Bar. It includes restaurants in New York City, Toronto (defunct), Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, a bakery established by pastry chef Christina Tosi, a bar (Nikai), and a quarterly magazine.
Christine Huyen Tran Hà is an American chef, writer and TV host. She is the first blind contestant of MasterChef and the winner of its third season in 2012.
Dominique Crenn is a French chef. As of 2016, she was the only female chef in the United States to attain three Michelin stars, for her restaurant Atelier Crenn, in San Francisco. Crenn has been featured in several Food Network and other television shows.
Andrea Reusing is an American chef, best known for her restaurant Lantern in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 2011, she won the Best Chef Southeast award from the James Beard Foundation Awards.
Katie Button is an American Chef and restaurateur. She holds the title of Executive Chef and CEO of the restaurant group Katie Button Restaurants which includes Cúrate Bar de Tapas and La Bodega by Cúrate located in Asheville, North Carolina.. She also operates an online Spanish food market, Cúrate at Home, and a culinary travel company, Cúrate Trips.
Ann Kim is a James Beard Award-winning chef and restaurateur in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Sean Sherman is an Oglala Lakota Sioux chef, cookbook author, forager, and promoter of indigenous cuisine. Sherman founded the indigenous food education business and caterer The Sioux Chef and cofounded with then-partner Dana Thompson the nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS). He received a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award and his 2017 cookbook, The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen, won the 2018 James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook. In 2022 the restaurant he co-owned with Thompson, Owamni, won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.
Abbi Merriss is an American chef from Indianapolis. She was a James Beard award semifinalist in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 and in February 2020 received her fifth nomination. Her restaurant, Bluebeard, was nominated for a Beard award for Best New Restaurant in America in 2012. She specializes in New American cuisine.
The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize culinary professionals in the United States. The awards recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists each year, and are generally scheduled around James Beard's May birthday.
The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize culinary professionals in the United States. The awards recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists each year, and are generally scheduled around James Beard's May birthday.
The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize culinary professionals in the United States. The awards recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists each year, and are generally scheduled around James Beard's May birthday.
Berlu is a Vietnamese restaurant and bakery in Portland, Oregon.
Owamni by the Sioux Chef, or simply Owamni, is a Native American restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, that overlooks the Mississippi River. Owamni's majority Native American staff serves a menu made from indigenous ingredients such as game meats, corn, and wild plants. The restaurant does not serve ingredients that were introduced to the region by Europeans, including butter, dairy, sugar, black pepper, wheat, chicken, beef, and pork.
Yia Vang is a Hmong-American chef in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Dana Thompson is an American restaurateur, songwriter, and promoter of indigenous cuisine and food sovereignty. In 2022 her Minneapolis, Minnesota, restaurant Owamni won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.
Ann Ahmed is a Laotian-American chef and restaurateur in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation and the New York Times.