Nancy Silverton is an American chef, baker, and author. The winner of the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef Award in 2014, Silverton is recognized for her role in popularizing sourdough and artisan breads in the United States.
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, 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.
Zarela Martínez is a New York City-based restaurateur and cookbook author. She learned cooking from her mother Aida Gabilondo, also a cookbook author. Martínez serves on the Board of Directors for the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.
Yotam Assaf Ottolenghi is an Israeli-born British chef, restaurateur, and food writer. With Sami Tamimi, he is the co-owner of six delis and restaurants in London, as well as the author of several bestselling cookery books, including Ottolenghi (2008), Plenty (2010), Jerusalem (2012) and SIMPLE (2018).
Susan Spicer is a New Orleans-based chef, who owns several restaurants in that city, including a take-out food market which doubles as a bakery. She has received several awards, and appeared in the 2009 finale of the Bravo television program Top Chef. Currently she has a partnership with Regina Keever, and together they opened Bayona in 1990, a four star restaurant.
Tanya Holland is an American professional chef, restaurateur, podcast host, cookbook author, and owner of Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland, CA. Her first book, New Soul Cooking, was published by Stuart, Tabori & Chang in 2003. A second book, Brown Sugar Kitchen: New Style Down-Home Recipes from Sweet West Oakland with a foreword by Michael Chabon, was released in 2014 by Chronicle Books. Holland competed on the 15th season of Top Chef on Bravo, was the host and soul food expert on Food Network’s Melting Pot, and appears on the HBO Max show Selena + Chef starring Selena Gomez. She is a frequent contributing writer and chef to the James Beard Foundation, and Brown Sugar Kitchen has received multiple Michelin Bib Gourmand awards. She is an in-demand public speaker and lecturer who frequently leads the conversation on inclusion and equity in the hospitality industry. In 2020, she released her debut Tanya's Table Podcast produced by MuddHouse Media. Guests on the podcast include Questlove, Samin Nosrat, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Alice Waters, Danny Meyer, Gina Torres & more.
David Guas is a chef, TV personality, restaurateur and cookbook author from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Johnny Iuzzini /u-zee-nee/ is an American pastry chef, television celebrity, and cookbook author. He resides in New York City. He is a 1994 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and served as executive pastry chef at Daniel from 2001 through 2002, and at Jean Georges from 2002 through 2011. Iuzzini is author of two cookbooks, and was a judge on the first three seasons of The Great American Baking Show in 2017. On November 29, 2017, Iuzzini was accused of sexual harassment by four former employees and the third season of The Great American Baking Show was pulled after one episode.
Christina Tosi is an American chef, author, and television personality. She is the chef, founder, owner, and CEO of Milk Bar, the sister bakery to the Momofuku restaurant group, with seventeen locations across North America. She is influential in the culinary industry, and was featured on Food & Wine magazine's list of "Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink" in 2014.
Judy Rodgers was an American chef, restaurateur, and cookery book writer. She became famous at Zuni Café, in San Francisco, California, of which she became chef in 1987. Rodgers' food was influenced both by Chez Panisse, where she had worked, and by the food of France, where she had spent time as an exchange student living with the family of Jean Troisgros. The Zuni Café Cookbook, published in 2002, spread the influence of her painstaking, attentive approach to food further outside the United States.
Milk Bar is a chain of dessert and bakery restaurants in the United States, founded by chef Christina Tosi. Tosi owns the chain with the Manhattan-based Momofuku restaurant group; Momofuku does not control the operations of Milk Bar.
Janice Wong is a Singaporean pastry chef who owns 2am:dessert bar in Holland Village, 2am:lab, in November 2014 she launched her eponymous sweet concept brand, Janice Wong. The Janice Wong brand has two retail outlets and two restaurants in Singapore; a dessert bar and lab in Tokyo, Japan; and a retail and dining experience at the MGM Cotai in Macau.
Jacquy Pfeiffer is a French master pastry chef and teacher. He co-founded the French Pastry School in Chicago, and co-authored The Art of French Pastry cookbook. He is the primary subject of the 2010 documentary Kings of Pastry.
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.
Melissa Clark is an American food writer, cookbook author and New York Times columnist. She is the author of over 40 cookbooks and has received multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation and IACP for her work. Clark is a regular guest on television series such as Today show, Rachael Ray and Iron Chef America and on radio programmes such as The Splendid Table on NPR and The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC.
Claire Saffitz is an American food writer, chef, and YouTube personality. Until mid-2020, she was a contributing editor at Bon Appétit magazine and starred in several series on the Bon Appétit YouTube channel. Her best-known series was Gourmet Makes, in which she created gourmet versions of popular snack foods by reverse engineering them. Since leaving the company, she has published a cookbook, Dessert Person, which became a New York Times Best Seller, and continues work as a video host on her own YouTube channel and as a freelance recipe developer, including for New York Times Cooking.
Rachel Goenka is an Indian restaurateur, chef, author and the founder and CEO of Mumbai based The Chocolate Spoon Company. She runs a chain of restaurants such as The Sassy Spoon, a European restaurant, House of Mandarin, a Chinese restaurant, Baraza Bars and Bites, a beach shack themed pub, Wicked China, an Asian resto-bar, and Sassy Teaspoon, a chain of patisseries and bakeries.
Lena Richard was a chef, cookbook author, restaurateur, frozen food entrepreneur, and television host from New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1949, Richard became likely the first Black woman to host her own television cooking show. Her show aired from October 1949 - November 1950 on local television station WDSU.
Stella Parks is an American pastry chef and food writer based in Kentucky. She has worked in various Lexington-area restaurants, notably Table 310, and was a longtime contributor to Serious Eats. Parks received a James Beard Foundation Award in 2018 for her bestselling cookbook BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts.
