The James Beard Foundation announced its finalists for the 2024 chef and restaurant awards this morning, the biggest culinary awards ceremony in the US, narrowing a long list of semifinalists and anointing this year’s official nominees. 

The organization gives out 22 chef and restaurant awards annually, recognizing the crème of the national restaurant scene in specific categories—hospitality, wine, bakeries, chefs, and so forth—as well as regional “Best Chefs.” At this stage, each category is narrowed to a list of five (except for the highly-competitive national award for Best New Restaurant, which has 10).

Media awards nominees will be announced April 30. And winners across all categories will be crowned at a black tie ceremony at the Lyric Opera of Chicago June 10—conveniently for restaurant folk, that’s a Monday. If you’ll remember, Portland took home more awards than any other city last year. 

Oregon went into this round of cuts well-represented on the national scale, with semifinalists in six categories, albeit only one in each category. And we're looking good coming out of it—four made it through. 

Sarah Minnick of Lovely’s Fifty Fifty has her first official nomination for Outstanding Chef; she has been a semifinalist twice in the regional category, but never made it to this round. Langbaan received its first individual recognition since it was a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant in 2015. Of course Akkapong Earl Ninsom’s empire (Yaowarat, Hat Yai, Paadee) has been mentioned more than a few times in the Best Restaurateur category, but this nod reinforces that nearly a decade in and recently moved across the river inside of Phuket Café, Langbaan is strong as ever. And pastry chefs Jin Caldwell and Kyurim “Q” Lee of JinJu Patisserie are finalists in the Outstanding Bakery category, making it through to the ceremony on their first time out with the foundation. And outstanding JinJu certainly is, recently reopened in March after Lee’s cancer treatment. 

Perhaps the biggest fireworks come with the news that chef Kari Kihara's Hayward, in McMinnville's Mac Market, is nominated for Best New Restaurant. This is huge for the chef that just opened her first restaurant under her own name in 2023, which, not to mention, was supposed to be a casual breakfast café inside a marketplace, not necessarily one of the 10 best new full-service restaurants in the country that it’s gracefully become. 

Two of Oregon's five semifinalists made it through in the regional Best Chef Northwest and Pacific category, which includes Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. Josh Dorcak, whose restaurant MÄS in Ashland has received a slew of press in recent years, including being named one of the New York Times' 50 best restaurants, is in for the second time. And it should come as no surprise that Gregory Gourdet of Kann is a finalist, putting him up for his third James Beard Award win. And he’s the obvious favorite of the bunch. Berlu’s Vince Nguyen, Portland Monthly’s 2022 chef of the year, took home this award last year. 

We’re surprised to see Matthew Lightner of Okta in McMinnville cut from the list, as well as Ryan Roadhouse, a semifinalist for this award many times over the past decade, whose restaurant Nodoguro is in an exciting new chapter in a new location. But overall, Oregon is sitting pretty ahead of the awards ceremony in June.

Best Chef Northwest and Pacific 

Josh Dorcak, MÄS, Ashland

Gregory Gourdet, Kann, Portland