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Minnesota's James Beard Award Finalists Announced: The Dish!

Five Minnesota restaurants and chefs are nominated. Who's up, who's down?

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Grab your coffee and/or champagne, Minnesota, it’s a dishy day—the James Beard Award finalists are out! As the Oscar nominees are to the Oscars, so are the Beard finalists to the Beards. This is it, the biggest of big deals, this day goes down on all our permanent records. Let’s get into it. 

First, the national awards, that is, those who are up against the whole darn country, and yes, that includes the capital of the food world, New York City, and the other capital, San Francisco—and us little Twin Cities, we are in the mix! 

But before diving into that, an absolute swerve! Angie Craig? 

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, our own congresswoman from MN-02, has been awarded—not a finalist, this is the final decision, the big deal, the day to celebrate—Angie Craig has won an Impact Award. This is the first year these have ever been awarded, and they’re basically lifetime achievement awards for doing good things in food. Like what? Craig is the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Agriculture, and additionally, the Beard Foundation notes her lead efforts to pass the Lower Food and Fuel Costs Act, which included two of her bills: the Strengthening the Agriculture and Food Supply Chain Act and the Year-Round Fuel Choice Act. Needless to say, food is more than restaurants. The foundation of food is: Farmers, growers, and land use; farming and growing and land use! 

I am so happy to see the Beard Foundation recognizing this, and I’m also very interested to see our fair state so continuously punching above our weight, when it comes to national thinking about our collective political future. Congrats Angie Craig, keep on keeping on you rising star. 

Now, let’s get into the restaurant finalists.

National Categories

Best New Restaurant: Bûcheron

Wowee, wow! We knew Bûcheron was significant when it opened, and it looks now like all the world agrees. This nomination might seem a little inside baseball in terms of what I think they’re being nominated for, but hear me out: Every generation has to redefine fine dining for themselves, and Bûcheron is doing this work for millennials. Can food be absolutely fine-dining complex, but presented with warm hospitality in absolute casual style? That is, the finest new thoughts about American tortellini and Paper Plane cocktails in the chicest possible space, but you’re cozy and casual in your favorite hoodie? This might seem esoteric if you’re not inside the restaurant world, but the project of refreshing the meaning, style, and ways of fine dining is essential if America is to have a fine-dining future, and that’s what I see the Bûcheron nomination to be about. Congrats, co-owning married chef and front-of-house hospitality pros Adam Ritter and Jeanie Janas Ritter! What a big deal, you are in the biggest of big leagues, and congratulations to you all.

Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program: Bar Brava

One of the best wine bars in the country, so I have said for a really long time, and so has been recognized now by the voters of the Beard Foundation. If Brava isn't known to you: Brava made their reputation on natural wines, that is, on wines made without the technological innovations and shortcuts that became common after World War II, but since opening Dan Rice has turned Bar Brava into a sort of boot-strapping restaurant incubator for the new generation of up-and-coming chefs, like Baaska Tegshbileg of Sushi by Baaska, Sydney Reuter and Axel Pineda of Torsk, and Eric Pham of Khue’s Kitchen, among many others.  

I see this nomination as the Beard Foundation very much making a stand to recognize a positive vision of our food and wine future: The future is not about sameness, the future is not about land exploitation through biocides, the future is about nurturing community, and lifting all boats. This nomination really feels great to me. This nomination is also a secret award given out to the whole Minnesota community of small-winery wine importers, future of land and culture wine-thinkers, and of course all you local wine drinkers who have been interested in exploring those ideas. Congrats Dan Rice, congrats to the brainy and adventurous Twin Cities beverage folk who support Bar Brava in the background with their own work, and congrats to the Bar Brava crew, I’ve never run into anyone there behind the bar who can’t speak at length and with great passion to the little miracles in all the glasses. Yay, Bar Brava!

Regional Awards

Best Chef: Midwest

The Twin Cities have captured three of the possible five slots. Will this mean the Twin Cities voters’ impact is diluted—or are we on lock? 

Here’s the category in full:

Best Chef: Midwest (IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD, WI)

  • Shigeyuki Furukawa, Kado no Mise, Minneapolis, MN
  • Diane Moua, Diane's Place, Minneapolis, MN
  • Loryn Nalic, Balkan Treat Box, Webster Groves, MO
  • Karyn Tomlinson, Myriel, St. Paul, MN
  • David Utterback, Ota and Yoshitomo, Omaha, NE

Here’s what I see: I just wrote about these chefs’ various strengths in my semifinalist post, and my thoughts haven’t much changed, go see what I wrote then, or I’ll shorthand it for you.

Shigeyuki Furukawa: Absolute pristine traditionalist. Eating Furukawa’s food is like going to a temple, everything is precise, serene, a continuation of traditional Japanese dining culture, and an immersion in beauty. Kado no Mise is like a ceremonial connection with seasons, internality, and poetry, rendered in food. 

Diane Moua: Carrying French pastry and modern cuisine into the future through the prism of her Hmong girlhood and her professional adulthood as a Minneapolis restaurant star. I really think her pandan croissant is to now as Dominique Ansel’s Cronut was to the early 2010s. It’s so extremely difficult to conceive of new, wonderful, replicable versions of classic foods, and Moua is just up at Diane’s Place tossing them off like she walked in with a sack of disc-golf frisbees and everyone gets one. Absolutely new French toast, technically innovative pandan croissant, no one ever imagined this carpaccio, wow can you even do that with a Bloody Mary—truly incredible. Read my review of Diane's Place, and my longer profile of her, for those seeking more detail.

Karyn Tomlinson: A heart-led jeweler of visionary farm-to-table. I consistently find Tomlinson’s food to be the things that it is very difficult for food to be: Lyrical, original, something that sort of threads out from her kitchen with invisible strings and does the rarest of all restaurant tricks: It makes you feel better. It does the thing that is supposed to be at the heart of the project of all restaurants—it restores. Does that sound small? It’s big. She's been in the national spotlight lately, on CBS Mornings and such. I think it's one of those situations where anyone that goes to Myriel goes in a little skeptical, the menu just looks like a menu, but then they walk out transformed. Will this be enough to win? Who knows! She's truly an incredible talent, and St. Paul, she's your lone nomination this year against big old Minneapolis—go and show your love? 

How will voters vote? Who will win? Please enter the horse race and gossip part of this discussion, in which your opinion is worth as much as mine. 

I’m at a loss to predict which way this goes, for these Twin Cities chefs couldn’t be more different, and of course all that Minnesota gives Missouri or Nebraska a chance to consolidate with unanimity and upset our Minnesota gloating. 

The Best Chef: Midwest category is particularly confounding to try to call, it reminds me of that old joke: A Japanese temple, the future of pastry, and Vivaldi’s violin concertos walk into a bar… I mean, that will never be an old joke, because it makes no sense, but hopefully it’s a bizarre enough simile that it captures how different these chefs are. 

I will say: It’s kind of interesting to see who got knocked out of the semifinalist round, particularly Yia Vang of Vinai and Ann Ahmed of Khâluna and Gai Noi.

I know that the food world’s glitterati have been jetting into the Twin Cities and visiting all the semifinalist spots, so much so that I’ve heard a few local foodies reporting irritation at constantly being asked to compare our planet Earth’s two greatest Hmong restaurants, Diane’s Place and Vinai. I’ve heard arguments made that the two spots really have nothing in common and shouldn’t be compared; and arguments running the other way, that the world’s restaurant gossips are like busybody aunties, comparing cousins. It might be wrong, but it’s human nature, and how can you stop them?

Does Diane’s Place emerging from this dialogue as the Beard finalist mean something, or nothing? I don’t know, I’m just a very opinionated and reasonably well-informed spectator at this stage, I don’t have any inside knowledge. But it definitely strikes me as: Very interesting. And I do think there’s an awful lot of energy behind Diane’s Place right now. Because it’s spectacular!

Spectacular too: All of you Minnesota food folk, who have nurtured this most excellent list of finalists. Next up: June 16, when the finalists go to Chicago and get all dressed up, and find out who wins.

Or did we already find out who won, and it’s us, all of us Minnesotans? Pour some champagne and/or coffee, and discuss!

Mpls.St.Paul Daily Edit

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