Rick Bayless is an American chef and restaurateur who specializes in traditional Mexican cuisine with modern interpretations. He is widely known for his PBS series Mexico: One Plate at a Time. Among his various accolades are a Michelin star, the title of Top Chef Masters, and seven James Beard Awards.
Lidia Giuliana Matticchio Bastianich is an Italian-American celebrity chef, television host, author, and restaurateur. Specializing in Italian and Italian-American cuisine, Bastianich has been a regular contributor to public television cooking shows since 1998.
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.
The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists in the United States. They are scheduled around James Beard's May 5 birthday. The media awards are presented at a dinner in New York City; the chef and restaurant awards were also presented in New York until 2015, when the foundation's annual gala moved to Chicago. Chicago will continue to host the Awards until 2027.
Tyson Cole is a chef and restaurateur based in Austin, Texas, USA.
Uchi is a contemporary Japanese sushi restaurant located in Austin, Texas, which opened in 2003. The Japanese word "Uchi" translates to "house" in English, and the 2,700-square-foot (250 m2) space is a refurbished home. Owner and chef Tyson Cole's menu consists of hot and cool tastings, sushi and sashimi, makimono, yakimono and tempura, and a changing omakase based on seasonal items. In 2011, Cole won the “Best Chef, Southwest” award from the James Beard Foundation.
Jennifer Yee is an American chef, specializing in pastry. Born and raised in San Francisco, she worked in several pastry kitchens in some of New York's finest restaurants, including Lafayette in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan as Patissière, and The Grill in midtown Manhattan's Seagram Building, as the opening Pastry Chef, before becoming the Executive Pastry Chef for Chef Linton Hopkins' restaurants in Atlanta. Her work has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation in both New York and Atlanta.
Sean Brock is an American chef specializing in Southern cuisine.
Joseph Johnson is an American chef and author best known for cooking the food of the African diaspora. He is the 2019 recipient of a James Beard Foundation Book Award, which he received for Between Harlem and Heaven, co-authored with Alexander Smalls.
Michael Solomonov is an Israeli chef known for his restaurants throughout Philadelphia. His first restaurant Zahav, founded in 2008, has received national recognition including the James Beard Foundation "Outstanding Restaurant" in 2019. Solomonov was also awarded Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2011, Cookbook of the Year in 2016, and Outstanding Chef in 2017 from the James Beard Foundation. In 2021, The New York Times named his restaurant Laser Wolf as one of "the 50 places in America we're most excited about right now."
Kwame Onwuachi is a Nigerian-American chef based in New York City, New York. A published author and restaurateur, he also appeared as a contestant on Top Chef in 2015. He was recognized by Food & Wine magazine, Esquire magazine, and the James Beard Foundation as "Rising Star Chef of the year" in 2019.
Gregory Gourdet is an American chef, writer, restaurateur, and former finalist on the twelfth and seventeenth seasons of Bravo's American reality television series, Top Chef. He is of Haitian descent. He is the owner of the restaurant Kann and the former executive chef and culinary director of Departure at The Nines in Portland, Oregon. His book, Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health, is a national bestseller.
Mei Lin is a Chinese-born American chef and television personality, best known as the winner of the twelfth season of the Bravo television network's reality television series, Top Chef. After winning Top Chef in 2014, Lin worked as a personal chef for Oprah Winfrey before going on to open her first restaurant, Nightshade in Los Angeles in 2019. She became engaged to her fiancé Andrew Skala on January 14, 2023. On April 9, 2023, Lin won the fourth season of Food Network's Tournament of Champions.
Beast was a restaurant in Portland, Oregon, United States. The business earned chef and owner Naomi Pomeroy a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Northwest in 2014.
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.
Florence's Restaurant is a restaurant in Oklahoma City. In 2022 it was named one of America's Classics by the James Beard Foundation.
Lisa Becklund is the chef and co-owner, with Linda Ford, of Living Kitchen Farm & Dairy in Depew, Oklahoma, FarmBar in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and il seme in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Menus at their restaurants are created using produce from their own garden and from other local farms. Becklund was a semifinalist in 2020 for James Beard Foundation Awards Best Chef-Southwest, which made her one of the first nominees from Oklahoma's second largest city." She was a semifinalist in the same category again in 2023. In 2022, their restaurant Living Kitchen Farm & Dairy was a seminfinalist for James Beard Outstanding Restaurant.
Hugo Ildefonso Ortega is a Mexican-born American chef, cookbook author and 2017 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: Southwest.
Andrew Le is a Vietnamese American chef based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Le was awarded the Honolulu Magazine's Hale ‘Aina Award for the "Restaurateur of the Year" in 2017. He was also named as a James Beard Foundation Award semifinalist in 2023 and 2024.
