The Daniels (Humm, left, and Boulud, right). Pic via Metromix.com.
Here’s a shoutout to the Salmaland favorites that won big awards this past week at the James Beard Foundation Awards, which the restaurant industry likes to call “the Oscars of the food world.” Red carpet, ballgowns, long speeches: check, check, check. Yours truly didn’t rock a ballgown this year (actually, never have at the Beards) but did get somewhat gussied up, in annual tradition. Fun night was had: Too much food, too many drinks, and er too many speeches. I’d like to say I’m still recovering a week later, hence the slight delay in reporting on the event. But truth is: Loads of deadlines for various magazines and editorial projects I’m working on, so my own little self-imposed Salmaland deadline had to wait. Read about the Beards ceremony and after-parties here and here and here. Now, on to the winners—not all of them, but the ones you might want to know about.
First, the NYC winners:
Marea: Best New Restaurant. Nationwide!
Standard Grill: Outstanding Restaurant Graphics, “for the best restaurant graphics executed in North America since January 1, 2007.” Damn, 2007?
Other big NYC winners: Eleven Madison Park (for Best Chef New York City); Daniel (for Outstanding Restaurant); Keith McNally (of Pulino‘s, Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, et al, for Outstanding Restaurateur); Jean-Georges (for Outstanding Wine Service); and Craft (for Outstanding Chef Tom Colicchio). Some of these haven’t made an appearance yet on Salmaland, only out of a combination of sheer obviousness and chef-mega-stardom. But hit all of these restaurants, if you can, in your lifetime—or on a regular basis if you’ve got an enviable supply of time and money and fresh dry-cleaning.
A few tips: Eleven Madison is best in the daytime, when the sunlight pours into the soaring dining room and chef Humm’s beauteous French-ish concotions seem even more magical. Restaurant Daniel is the mostly uncontroversial, multiply starred French cuisine den to check into if you need to entertain clients or moneybags in-laws or a fancy date, or to enjoy the occasional balls-out splurge. Colicchio is…Colicchio. (I haven’t yet been to his newest, Colicchio and Sons, but what he churns out at Craft and the various Craft offshoots has stayed solid year after year.)
Cheers also to these other Salmaland favorites: Sfoglia (for the Best Single Subject Cookbook: Pasta Sfoglia), and to Ariane and Michael Batterberry (Lifetime Achievement Award for founding Food Arts and my alma mater, Food & Wine). And outside NYC, a shoutout to the brilliant Koren Grievson of Avec in Chicago (Best Chef Great Lakes), Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago (Outstanding Service), and Donald Link in New Orleans (owner of the kick-ass restaurant Cochon and winner of the American Cooking cookbook award for Real Cajun). Bummer that the seriously talented Bryan Caswell of Reef in Houston didn’t win for Best Chef Southwest. But…it’s an honor just to be nominated. Right.