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    Here Are the 2025 James Beard Restaurant Award Winners

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    Toni Tipton-Martin, Jungsik Yim and the restaurateurs behind Le Veau d’Or were among the top honorees.The James Beard Foundation gave out its annual culinary awards Monday night in Chicago, with the chefs and co-hosts Andrew Zimmern and Nyesha Arrington handing out gold medals to chefs, restaurateurs, bakers and bartenders from across the United States.To reflect the growing influence of cocktail and bar culture, three new awards were given out this year: best new bar, outstanding professional in beverage service and outstanding professional in cocktail service.New York City restaurants won three of the six major national awards: outstanding chef (Jungsik Yim of Jungsik), outstanding hospitality (Atomix) and outstanding restaurateur (Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr of Frenchette, Le Rock and Le Veau d’Or).It was the 35th edition of the black-tie gala, which has been transformed from a Monday-night-only event (to allow chefs to squeeze in a trip when restaurants are traditionally closed) to a full weekend of panels and pop-ups. (Food media professionals like writers, directors, podcasters and influencers received their awards at a ceremony on Saturday.)The awards program was suspended in 2020 and 2021 as the industry responded to the pandemic, and as the foundation tried to incorporate rapidly evolving ideas about race, gender, privilege and workers’ rights. Since then, priorities have shifted away from the traditional guest experience — food, service and décor — and toward evaluating chefs and restaurants as employers, community members and professional leaders.Toni Tipton-Martin was presented with the lifetime achievement award.Jeff Schear/Getty Images For James Beard FouWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jacques Pépin: Our Food Reflects Our History

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      How we cook and what we eat are an intimate reflection of our personal and collective pasts.This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What is history? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.As a young chef in the 1950s, I had a bit of a complex about not having an education. I had left school at the age of 13 and learned my trade in the kitchen. I was traveling to New York City in 1959, looking to expand my horizons, when someone on my boat mentioned Columbia University as the best school in the city. A week after I arrived, I took the subway uptown to Columbia’s campus.I would go on to study at Columbia from the fall of 1959 to the spring of 1972. During my time there, I proposed a doctoral dissertation on the history of French cooking in the context of history and literature. I was amazed by how many of the great French works contained references to food, eating and the art of the table. The wedding feast in Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” is meticulously depicted, and in Colette’s “Chéri,” breakfast becomes an important ritual with sexual overtones. My proposal was turned down. The subject was too menial, too simple — not worth the intellectual pursuit. I dropped out.For many years, the work of cooking was indeed considered too menial. A chef was a physical laborer in a basement kitchen dealing with food, fat and dirty dishes, doing nothing more than creating sustenance. But there is nothing more worthy of intellectual pursuit and respect than food. Not only is it a part of history, it also actively shapes and reflects it. Indeed, my whole life, my history, was molded by it.I was born in 1935, on the eve of World War II. Life was simpler then. The Michelin Guide, whose prestigious designations are now sought by chefs around the world, had only begun awarding stars to restaurants in 1926 and was exclusively the domain of the French. It would be decades before a Michelin star was granted to a restaurant outside of France. Our history — and what we ate — was defined by and limited to our own place and time.A wall of photos at Jacques Pépin’s home in Connecticut, including pictures of Pépin with Julia Child and former President Barack Obama. Pépin’s career covers more than seven decades.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Magnolias Are in Bloom. It’s Time to Eat Them.

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      Plus: a boutique hotel near Joshua Tree, the rise of Japanese wine and more recommendations from T Magazine.Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday, along with monthly travel and beauty guides, and the latest stories from our print issues. And you can always reach us at tmagazine@nytimes.com.Stay HereA Tranquil Hotel at the Edge of Joshua Tree National ParkThe rooms at Hotel Wren, in Twentynine Palms, Calif., feature custom millwork and vintage décor that make each space distinct.Ethan JonesJust 15 minutes from Joshua Tree National Park, an arrow-shaped sign beckons drivers off historic Route 62 and down brush-lined roads to the Mojave Desert’s newest accommodations, Hotel Wren. Initially built in the 1940s as a motor lodge, the 12-room hotel in Twentynine Palms, Calif., that opened in March offers kitchenettes and private patios that open onto the desert, along with access to a saltwater pool, hot tub and native plant garden. A two-and-a-half hour drive from Los Angeles and three-and-a-half hours from Las Vegas, the adults-only property was remodeled with an emphasis on tranquillity. The rooms, which feature pitched ceilings, vintage décor and furniture made in Joshua Tree, are absent of TVs. Though the original midcentury carport remains, the bones of the buildings were softened with hand-troweled plaster, corners were rounded and the floors were replaced with flagstones and tiles embedded with fossilized plant material and animal tracks. The on-site bodega, Windsong, is stocked with wine and provisions, including organic Italian pasta and tinned fish. There is also a community pantry with free herbs and seasonings, and the complimentary breakfast includes eggs and locally made bagels. The less-visited north entrance to Joshua Tree National Park is close by, but guests can just as easily take in the area’s rugged beauty from their rooms. Rates from about $330 a night, hotelwren29.com.Smell ThisMarin Montagut’s First Fragrance Channels Summer in SicilyMarin Montagut’s new perfume, L’Eau Douce, comes in marbled-paper packaging.©Romain RicardThe Parisian illustrator and designer Marin Montagut is known for his fanciful objects and romantic aesthetic. His work, whether it’s a porcelain jug or a hand-drawn postcard, prioritizes craftsmanship and often references the past. Now he’s releasing his first eau de parfum, L’Eau Douce. Four years ago, he began attempting to encapsulate his fond memories of Sicilian summers in a fragrance. Collaborating with the nose Maïa Lernout, who has worked with Dior, Kenzo and Burberry, among other fashion brands, Montagut began with the scent of orange blossoms. He then added white musk to evoke the smell of freshly washed linen strung out to dry in the sun. Notes of mint, lemon, fig and bergamot round out the perfume. For its packaging, Montagut used marbled paper, a signature of his brand, to create an illustrated box. Each bottle is decorated with a gold medallion featuring two hands that can be removed and worn as a necklace. “I wanted to give a gift in a gift,” he says. Montagut’s name, Marin, has Latin roots pertaining to the sea, and L’Eau Douce, fittingly, translates to “freshwater.” From about $190, marinmontagut.com.In SeasonThe New York Chefs Making Magnolia Blossoms LastLeft: the New York chef Hannah Musante’s magnolia blossoms stuffed with sourdough toast ice cream. Right: magnolia branches in New York’s Union Square Park.Left: courtesy of Hannah Musante. Right: James Andrews/istock/Getty ImagesOn a drizzly April afternoon in Brooklyn, the New Jersey-based forager Tama Matsuoka Wong pulled up to the Prospect Heights restaurant Cafe Mado with a bounty in the back of her van. One of her produce bins was filled with plastic clamshells that held dozens of pointy pink saucer magnolia buds. Her chef clients “are always wanting flowers,” she says. And in the northeast, saucer magnolia is “one of the earliest blooming,” a herald of spring that typically emerges in March and lasts about a month. The petals have a gingery taste and a texture similar to a squash blossom. Wong foraged the buds in Pennsylvania and Maryland at the start of the season, before making her way north to New Jersey. Cafe Mado’s chef, Nico Russell, is preserving the flowers in sour honey. He plans to serve them in a dessert with buttermilk and local strawberries when the latter is in season around June. The restaurant’s bar team is working on a nonalcoholic cocktail that combines amazake, a Japanese fermented rice drink, with magnolia tea. Wong also provides the buds to Flynn McGarry, the chef at Gem Home in NoLIta and the forthcoming Hudson Square restaurant Cove (scheduled to open this fall). He’s been soaking the petals in vinegar and plans to serve them “like pickled ginger,” he says, with crudo at Cove. The Brooklyn-based chef Hannah Musante collected her own flowers from a friend’s backyard, then stuffed them with sourdough toast ice cream. She covered other buds in sugar to create a syrup, and used the leftover macerated flowers to fill a tart shell that she topped with crème fraîche and dried thyme flowers. “The first products of spring are always so exciting,” she says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. 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      Are the French Laundry and Per Se Still Worth a Splurge? We Went Back to See.

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      From the earliest days of the French Laundry, you knew to expect a very fine meal as soon as you walked through its signature blue door. What you didn’t see coming were the jokes.When Thomas Keller opened the restaurant in 1994, fancy food in America was in transition, moving away from its staid, snooty and stiffly French past, toward a locally focused ethos and a looser vibe. Like so many other diners, I made a pilgrimage to Yountville, Calif., to experience what the New York Times critic Ruth Reichl hailed as “the most exciting place to eat in the United States.”At my first bite of a dish called “oysters and pearls,” I laughed out loud. Who spoons caviar on top of humble tapioca? It was more than daring, it was madness. But it worked — the soft pop of caviar atop bouncy tapioca pearls and plump oysters, all surrounded by sabayon as light and briny as ocean foam. Not only was it one of the most delicious things I’d ever tasted, but its knowing poke at the “haute” in haute cuisine displayed a sense of humor both sophisticated and sly.Mr. Keller’s signature dish, “oysters and pearls,” was groundbreaking when the French Laundry opened in 1994. It’s still on the menu both there and at Pe Se.Colin Clark for The New York TimesAnd that was just the first of nine courses in a meal so exhilarating and fresh that more than 20 years and countless tasting menus later I can still remember every bite. The silky wobble of the truffle custard as I scooped it with a potato chip from a translucent eggshell. The supple snap of the butter-poached lobster with leeks and beets. The delicate crunch of the salmon tartare cornets, like tiny ice cream cones. Culinary wit and edible puns informed dishes from the “tongue in cheek” (braised beef cheeks and veal tongue with horseradish cream) to the trompe l’oeil “coffee” (actually semifreddo) and real doughnuts for dessert.Mr. Keller brought this precision and sense of fun — as well as much of the French Laundry menu — to New York City when he opened Per Se to glowing reviews in 2004. At the entrance was an oversize blue door, a nod to the one at the French Laundry, except that it didn’t open. Well-heeled diners were left tugging at the knob until, magically, glass panels on the side opened to admit them. The wizard will see you now.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Barbara Lynch Will Close All Her Restaurants

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      She helped put her city on the modern culinary map, but many employees said they paid a price in workplace abuse.Barbara Lynch, the celebrated chef who helped kick-start Boston’s modern fine-dining scene, announced Wednesday that her remaining restaurants were closing, ending a starry 30-year run that was shadowed in recent years by accusations of toxic working conditions in her kitchens.Her flagship, No. 9 Park, popular among the city’s political class since it opened in 1998 on Beacon Hill, will close at the end of the year, according to a statement first reported by Eater Boston. Ms. Lynch also announced on Instagram that the Rudder, a storied seafood spot that she took over and reopened last year in Gloucester, on the North Shore, had already closed. Her company, the Barbara Lynch Collective, did not immediately respond to an email seeking details about the closing of B & G Oysters, in the South End of Boston.In a report last year in The New York Times, more than 20 former and current staff members described a variety of abuse Ms. Lynch had inflicted on employees, including verbal attacks, inappropriate propositions, and touching, shoving and hitting. She denied the allegations, saying they were “fantastical” and “seemed designed to bring me down.”In January, she closed her white-tablecloth restaurant Menton, along with Sportello and Drink, all in the same building in the city’s Fort Point neighborhood, blaming an “uncooperative landlord.” She sold the Butcher Shop and Stir, the South End spots where the chef Kristen Kish began her run from “Top Chef” winner in 2012 to the show’s current host.In her statement on Wednesday, Ms. Lynch attributed the final closings to “the harsh realities of the global pandemic” and other “difficulties.” Last week, her company was sued for outstanding debt by its linen supplier; a 2023 class-action lawsuit by former employees over tips withheld during the pandemic is scheduled to be heard in November.The closings mark the end of a prominent culinary career for Ms. Lynch, whose roles as a Boston native, an early leader among women chefs, and a survivor of childhood neglect and rape won her national attention. She has described physical abuse in the kitchen by her first high-profile boss, the chef Todd English, and campaigned against such practices. But among the hundreds of alumni of Ms. Lynch’s kitchens, her short temper and drinking problem became an open secret, especially after she was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated in 2017.That same year, when her memoir was published, she led seven restaurants and was on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential Americans. She trained many young chefs, including Ms. Kish, Stephanie Cmar, Colin Lynch and Jason Bond.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      Cristeta Comerford, White House Chef to 5 Presidents, Retires

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      Ms. Comerford, known as “Cheffie” and the first woman and person of color to serve as White House executive chef, reflects on three decades of feeding first families.Growing up in the Philippines, Cristeta Comerford helped her mother, a seamstress, cook for a household of more than a dozen. They were simple meals: rice, a vegetable and fish or chicken, sometimes with extra potatoes to stretch the meal.She never considered that nourishing people, and doing a lot with a little, could be a job. But her father did.“He was like, ‘Cris! You should go to Cordon Bleu and be a chef,” Ms. Comerford, who goes by Cris or “Cheffie,” said in an interview on Thursday. She never did go to culinary school, but she became the first woman and person of color to serve as White House executive chef.Ms. Comerford, 61, retired last week, having cooked for five presidents and their families, charted out more than 50 state dinners, and overseen a renovation of the White House kitchen that was built more than a century ago. But she has not forgotten what first stirred her about cooking.“You see the public life, but at the end of the day the people that we serve are just people like us who want nourishment and good food,” Ms. Comerford said.Jill Biden, the first lady, praised the chef’s commitment to the first family in a statement announcing her retirement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      2024 James Beard Award Winners

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      Restaurants and chefs from Washington, D.C., Portland, Ore., and New Orleans took home top honors.The James Beard Foundation handed out its coveted culinary awards Monday evening in Chicago, showcasing an eclectic collection of winners from a range of restaurants in cities and towns across America.Michael Rafidi, of the Arab-influenced Albi in Washington, D.C., was named outstanding chef. He dedicated his award “to Palestine and to all the Palestinian people out there, whether it’s here or in Palestine or all over the world.”The 24-seat Thai tasting menu restaurant Langbaan in Portland, Ore., won the outstanding restaurant award. The team from Dakar NOLA in New Orleans, which offers a Senegalese tasting menu, received best new restaurant. The award for outstanding restaurateur went to Erika and Kelly Whitaker, who run a restaurant group in the Denver area. Chicago’s own Lula Cafe won for outstanding hospitality.In recent years, the awards, which were first given out in 1991, have evolved into a glamorous night of red carpet moments and food-focused partying funded largely by a roster of big-name sponsors.According to the Beard award organizers, the ceremony sold out for the first time in eight years with several nominees opting to bring their entire staffs to the event.The popularity of this year’s event suggests that the organization may have weathered conflicts both internal and external, which exploded in 2020 when the foundation canceled the awards at the last minute after critics said the slate of nominees was not diverse enough and contained chefs who had been accused of abuse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gramercy Tavern Chef in Charge of Food at the Reopened Waldorf Astoria

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      When the hotel reopens later this year, Michael Anthony will serve as culinary consultant and create an as-yet-unnamed American brasserie.When the Waldorf Astoria hotel, which has anchored Park Avenue in Midtown since 1931, reopens later this year, Michael Anthony will be the new culinary consultant in charge. Mr. Anthony, 56, has been at Gramercy Tavern since 2006, and will remain as executive chef and partner there.“I will not reduce my commitment to Gramercy,” he said. “Everyone supported me in this project”With his second toque at the Waldorf, his main responsibility will be to create an as-yet-unnamed American brasserie in the two-story space that was Oscar’s Brasserie. That new restaurant, also to open later this year, will have an entrance on Lexington Avenue and 50th Street as well as access from the hotel lobby. Its focus will be seasonal contemporary American fare that also reflects Mr. Anthony’s time working in France. The space is being designed by AvroKO Design, with a spacious bar on the ground floor and a white tablecloth dining room upstairs, reached by a grand staircase.The Waldorf Astoria, named for two hotels on Fifth Avenue that were demolished in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building, has been closed for renovations since 2017. It is now owned by Daija Insurance Group, based in Beijing, and is managed by Hilton Worldwide. Its Art Deco exterior and some of the interior public spaces are designated as landmarks. The Peacock Alley restaurant in the hotel lobby will become a high-end cocktail lounge; the Bull and Bear Steakhouse will not return, and the space will not be used as a restaurant. Mr. Anthony said that he had no information about the famous Starlight Roof, and that his responsibilities at the hotel did not include room service or banqueting.Working with the hotel will occupy much of his time until the new restaurant opens and for at least three months after. At Gramercy Tavern, Mr. Anthony said, he will rely on Aretah Ettarh, the chef de cuisine, who has been at the restaurant for seven years. “At the Waldorf I plan to build on my roots and what I’ve established at Gramercy to create something distinctive,” Mr. Anthony said. More