Will 2025 be a comeback year for Philly restaurants at the James Beard awards?

There are many ways American restaurants, chefs, and beverage professionals can prove themselves, but none so esteemed as the annual James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef awards, commonly referred to in the industry as the “Oscars of food.”

Philly chefs won big in 2023, with three highly coveted awards on the back of six nominations: Nok Suntaranon of Kalaya received the award for the Best Chef Mid-Atlantic; Ellen Yin of High Street Hospitality won the national award for Outstanding Restaurateur; and Friday Saturday Sunday was awarded Outstanding Restaurant. It felt like the Philadelphia restaurant scene was finally recognized in full on the national stage. Then, the following year, Philly won nothing. A lone contender, Jesse Ito, was nominated for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic — and lost.

This year may mark another pendulum swing, as Philadelphia has 15 contenders across multiple categories in what’s referred to in the industry as the “long list” — the semifinalists, which will get whittled down to a much tighter list of nominations in April, with the winners announced in June. The awards, since an overhaul undertaken in 2020 (when they were canceled for that year, as well as for 2021), also prioritize diversity in nominees, with a greater focus on smaller markets. And in an effort to be less opaque, the foundation now lists judges and the voting body on its website. (Inquirer critic Craig LaBan is on the 2025 Restaurant and Chef Awards Committee; I served as a voter back in 2015, when voters were not permitted to disclose their positions).

There are a few no-surprises heavy hitter semifinalists: Greg Vernick of Vernick Fish for Outstanding Chef, Kalaya for Outstanding Restaurant, and Machine Shop for Outstanding Bakery, all of whom frequently top other awards lists.

Abby Dahan, the pastry chef at this year’s most ambitious new restaurant, Provenance, is a semifinalist for the first time as Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker. Dahan has recently been celebrated for her pastries in the Inquirer, like “caramelized fruit compositions and decadent chocolate confections, including a 100 Grand Bar-style nugget [that Craig LaBan would ] hoard by the bucket for Halloween.”

Vernick and Dahan’s distinctions recognize the individuals; Machine Shop’s recognizes the entire team behind the establishment. Both restaurants and individuals can only be recognized in a single category per year, with overlaps only permitted under specific circumstances. For instance, a restaurant’s chef, pastry chef, beverage service, and cocktail professional, may be simultaneously nominated.

Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic is a regional award category that covers Washington, D.C., Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Jesse Ito of Royal Izakaya and Sushi has now been nominated for it eight times. This year, it’s alongside Yun Fuentes of Bolo, recognized for his innovative approach to Puerto Rican cuisine, Amanda Shulman of Her Place Supper Club, and Anthony Andiario — a semi-finalist for the first time, at last recognized for the hyper-seasonality of his restaurant and his practices of preservation. One wonders, though, if this is finally Ito’s year, given how he’s recently leveled up his impossible-to-get-into Royal Omakase, with an emphasis on composed dishes and nods to his mother’s Korean heritage.

Many of the other hot tickets in town, like the revived Roxanne and Scampi, opened too late in 2024 to be considered. So too was the luxe new cocktail bar, Almanac, situated above Old City’s rarefied omakase restaurant, Ogawa — including for the new award of Best New Bar, for which Kampar Kongsi received a nod — as establishments are only eligible for this year’s awards if they were open between October 1, 2023 through September 30, 2024.

This year marked the separation of identities of the bars from the restaurants in which they are housed, like the Lover’s Bar at Friday Saturday Sunday and Kampar Kongsi from Kampar. This turned out to be wise decision on the parts of both restaurants: Both were named semifinalists in their own right, garnering an Outstanding Bar nomination for a restaurant that won as Outstanding Restaurant in 2023 as well as one for Kampar, which was noticeably not on the long list (though its previous South Philly iteration, Sate Kampar, made it in 2017).

Some industry insiders I spoke with debated whether our state’s especially restrictive liquor laws makes it difficult for our beverage professionals to rise in this category; others say it merely makes them stand out more because it forces them to be especially creative. Enswell, for instance, is doing interesting things using only Pennsylvania-bottled wines and spirits, so it’s curious that it didn’t get a nod. In a surprise, however, Kensington’s Caphe Roasters made the list of Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program, rare for an establishment that specializes in coffee drinks.

Also unexpected, but just as welcome, is Little Fish’s nomination for Outstanding Hospitality. It’s rare for a BYOB to receive this recognition, given that historically, hospitality is frequently entangled with wine service. Perhaps the Awards are becoming sober-curious this year.

This might be the year of Mawn, whose chef Phila Lorn is nominated for Emerging Chef. Though considered an industry vet in Philly, to the rest of the world, he’s new on the scene as Mawn is his first restaurant. With his wife Rachel, their ability to foster fanaticism with an effortless approach to melding Southeast Asian and South Philly has made their small BYOB one of the toughest reservations in town, which will be interesting for judges as they make efforts to dine at nominated restaurants before the next round of voting.

One reason it’s invigorating to see the likes of Caphe Roasters, Mawn, and Little Fish make the list? None of them use big budget public relations firms to court attention from press and potential voters. Perhaps, as Lorn told me last month, he was right in advising other small businesses that sometimes you don’t need it.

In terms of notable omissions, it’s a little strange to not see Randy Rucker of River Twice and Little Water (though it opened too recently to be considered), given that he was on it last year, and is the host of the Foundation’s Taste America event at the Bellevue in March, so the Foundation is clearly paying attention to Rucker. Also surprising to see fully MIA from the list are Provenance’s Nich Bazik with his high-wire approach to French cooking and Tyler Akin of the lauded Bastia.

One might notice there are no pop-up chefs, despite them being a crucial part of the creative lifeblood of our city’s dining scene. They, along with food trucks, are technically eligible for awards, but their chances are going to be slim if they’re difficult to access — judges, who are spread out across the country and region, vote for restaurants they’ve eaten at in the past year. As a result, the long list doesn’t really reflect how many Philadelphians dine out these days, with the city’s robust pop-up and underground supper club scene led by chefs like Tim Dearing of Ule, Reuben Asaram in current residence at Kampar, and Melissa Fernando of Sri’s Company — all of whom who might never be recognized by the Foundation, until, of course, they open restaurants one day, that judges can actually go to.

Hopefully, it will be another triumphant year for Philly at the awards, but our culinary scene isn’t — and shouldn’t — be defined by these accolades. It’s so much larger and more dynamic than what they can capture, no matter how nice it feels to take home one of those medals.