Last night, the James Beard Foundation doled out its coveted awards to chefs and restaurants at a ceremony in Chicago. This was followed, of course, by afterparties. But the best part of the Beard Awards — aside from winning them, presumably — is discussing the results the next day. So let’s.
The most notable aspect of this year’s awards was that first-time nominees fared better than usual. When Eater's data visualization reporter Vince Dixon looked at the last 11 years of Beard Awards winners, he found that first-time nominees rarely win. A shift towards first-time nominees having a decent chance of winning is a big deal, and would go a long way to making the awards feel more timely and relevant to what is happening in American dining right now.
Here now, the five biggest surprises of this year’s awards:
1. Topolobampo won Outstanding Restaurant.
This award honors restaurants that are 10 years or older that are “a national standard bearer of consistent quality and excellence in food, atmosphere and service.” By virtue of having an age requirement, this isn’t necessarily the best restaurant in the country — plenty of restaurants under the 10-year mark are firing on all cylinders — but, typically, it is the one that has made a lasting impact that has won the award. Recent winners have included Alinea (2016), Blue Hill at Stone Barns (2015), and the Slanted Door (2014).
The hometown Chicago crew in the press room expressed their enthusiasm for Rick Bayless’s win, but it surprised Eater editors: Both Momofuku Noodle Bar and the Spotted Pig ushered in a new way of dining that restaurant-goers are still experiencing today. You like having hip ramen in your city? How about food-serious gastropubs? Thought so.
While the 28-year-old, freshly renovated Topolobampo was one of the first high-end Mexican restaurants to garner national press attention, with restaurants like Enrique Olvera’s Cosme and Ray Garcia’s Broken Spanish showcasing a more contemporary approach to Mexican cuisine, this win just feels like a head-scratcher. Besides, this was a repeat performance for Bayless, who won this award in 2007 for his 1987 debut, Frontera Grill, which raised the profile of Mexican cuisine in America and inspired Midwestern diners to take it seriously.
2. Los Angeles got shut out.
With SF’s Michelin-decorated Corey Lee taking home Best Chef: West (not surprising), Ghaya Oliveira taking home Outstanding Pastry Chef (not surprising), and Stephen Starr taking home Outstanding Restaurateur (also not surprising), and Kismet and Gwen losing in the design categories, no finalists from Los Angeles took home medals, even though the city boasts one of the most exciting dining scenes in the country right now.
Of course, neither did cities that never even got any nominations, like Vegas, or, oh, the entire delicious state of Hawaii.
3. Sarah Grueneberg and Rebecca Wilcomb won on their first nominations.
Not only do women rarely win Best Chef, it’s almost unheard of for women to win on their first nomination: Grueneberg is the first woman in Chicago to win the medal on her first shot since at least 2005, while Wilcomb won in a category that didn’t even have any female nominees last year.
Eater’s data shows that 80 percent of Best Chef winners were nominated the year before, while, overall, 82 percent of James Beard winners in the Outstanding, Rising Star, and Best Chef categories have been men — making winners five times more likely to be male than female. Hopefully Grueneberg and Wilcomb’s wins point to a permanent shift in the behavior of the Beard voters.
4. Duos did well this year.
Eater data have shown that chefs nominated in pairs tend not to fare as well as chefs nominated on their own. But this year saw wins in the regional Best Chef categories for Greg Denton and Gabrielle Quiñónez Denton of Portland’s meatery Ox and Andrew Taylor and Mike Wiley of essential Portland, ME restaurant Eventide Oyster Co.
5. Zach Engel continued the Alon Shaya domination streak.
Compared to past Rising Star Chef winners, New Orleans’ Zach Engel didn’t have the strongest odds: It was the Shaya chef de cuisine’s first nomination, while “Momofuku’s Matt Rudofker seemed to be from the right city (NYC) with the right number of previous nominations (one),” Dixon says.
In many ways, the victory also belongs to Alon Shaya — Engel’s boss — who is on quite a streak: In 2015, Shaya won Best Chef: South (for Domenica), and in 2016, he won Best New Restaurant for his eponymous restaurant — now the restaurant’s chef de cuisine is 2017’s Rising Star Chef. That’s an impressive run.
So how did Eater’s picks and predictions fare?
Of the 12 categories where Eater calculated odds for winners, six of those predictions were completely accurate. Of the remaining six categories, two showed that the eventual winners having close or decent odds of cinching the award, and of the four that didn't fit our calculated odds at all, three were won by first-time nominees who bucked historical trends. Six of our editors' picks won.