These Bay Area writers (including me!) won James Beard Awards
This past weekend I was in Chicago for the James Beard Media Awards, our industry's annual celebration of the best food journalism, cookbooks and food TV. (They're the sister awards to the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards, which were announced last night.) There were no musical numbers or red carpet interviews. But there were celebrities, and I am of course speaking about baking legend and author of 'The Cake Bible' Rose Levy Beranbaum, who pioneered the reverse creaming method and the use of weight measurements for baking in the United States. Also, Padma Lakshmi.
And I won a James Beard Award! I walked away with a medal for Emerging Voice in Journalism, which makes me feel like the very hungry caterpillar hatching from her cocoon after consuming one pickle, one lollipop, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of chocolate cake and other sundries, an accurate representation of my average Saturday. It's such an honor, and I'm grateful to my colleagues and editors for their support throughout my first year on the job.
One of the highlights of Saturday night was seeing so many familiar faces from the Bay Area, many of whom walked away winners. Today's newsletter is dedicated to them and their award-winning work; I hope you'll take a moment to read and listen to these exemplary local voices.
San Francisco resident and Chronicle contributor George McCalman won the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, together with his co-author Jeff Gordinier, for a beautiful feature in Food & Wine about the history of rice in Charleston. McCalman was recognized for his writing, but his trademark illustrations are remarkable as well.
In the Audio Programming category, Sebastopol-based chef Preeti Mistry — the force behind the East Bay's Juhu Beach Club and Navi Kitchen, both now closed — won for an episode of their podcast, ' Loading Dock Talks with Preeti Mistry ' featuring New York chef Telly Justice. Mistry frequently interviews Bay Area chefs like Fernay McPherson and Tu David Phu, so it's appointment listening for diners in our region.
The Professional and Restaurant category in the book awards honors a work by 'a culinary professional or restaurant chef' — think your favorite restaurant's cookbook rather than a book by a recipe developer or influencer. This year's winner was ' Convivir: Modern Mexican Cuisine in California's Wine Country,' the first cookbook from Rogelio Garcia, the chef at Auro in Napa Valley. Co-written with Andréa Lawson Gray of San Francisco, the book celebrates the intertwining of Garcia's Mexican heritage with the ingredients of Wine Country.
And one Bay Area-adjacent mention: Laila El-Haddad is a D.C. area-based author and activist, but her plus-one to the awards was our own Reem Assil of Top 100 restaurant Reem's. I think that makes her honorary, right? El-Haddad won in the Personal Essay With Recipes category for her Saveur piece ' A Cuisine Under Siege.' It's hard to find the right words to describe this powerful essay, an elegy for El-Haddad's aunt who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City in 2023. Cook her recipe for sumagiyya, a lamb stew with sumac, and give it a read.
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