The James Beard Foundation has announced the Semi-Finalists for their 2020 Restaurant and Chef Awards. Now in its 30th year, the James Beard Award remains one of the most coveted prizes in the American culinary world, and this year’s list of Semi-Finalists includes a lot of natural wine.
The Outstanding Wine Program category in particular has found a taste for all things minimally intervened. Nominees this year include natural wine-forward or natural wine-adjacent establishments like Bacchanal in New Orleans, Canard in Portland, haley.henry in Boston, L’Oursin in Seattle, the Morris in San Francisco, Night + Market in Los Angeles, and Ops in New York City. The full list of nominees is:
Bacchanal, New Orleans
Beholder, Indianapolis
Canard, Portland, OR
COTE, NYC
Death & Taxes, Raleigh, NC
element 47 at The Little Nell, Aspen, CO
Flight Wine Bar, Washington, D.C.
FnB, Scottsdale, AZ
Great China, Berkeley, CA
Grill 23, Boston
haley.henry, Boston
Le Caveau, Philadelphia
L’Oursin, Seattle
Lucky Palace, Bossier City, LA
Miller Union, Atlanta
The Morris, San Francisco
Night + Market Sahm, Venice, CA
Ops, NYC
Rosie Cannonball, Houston
Spiaggia, Chicago
In the Oustanding Wine, Spirits, and Beer Producer category, Brianne Day of Day Wines and Dierdre Heekin of La Garagista Farm + Winery as well as noted natural wine enthusiasts Jester King Brewing have all made the penultimate list of nominees.
The announcement of this year’s Finalists will be made at 9:00am EST on Wednesday, March 25th, with the winners being announced at the James Beard Awards Gala on Monday, May 4th at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. For more information or to see the full list of Semi-Finalists, visit the James Beard Foundation’s official website.
