This story was updated to correct an error. Jose Salazar did make it to the finalist round for Best Chef Great Lakes in 2024.
Cincinnati fell short of bringing home a coveted James Beard Award from the awards ceremony in Chicago Monday night.
Mike Stankovich, the owner of both Longfellow Bar, in Over-the-Rhine, and Downtown’s Mid-City Restaurant, was beaten out by Ignacio Jimenez of Superbueno bar in New York City in the Outstanding Professional in Cocktail service category. Meanwhile, Noah Sandoval, of the fine dining restaurant Oriole in Chicago, bested Wildweed owner David Jackman in the Best Chef Great Lakes category.
While many Cincinnati chefs and restaurants have made it to the finalist and semifinalist rounds of the James Beard Awards, no one has won since Camp Washington Chili took home an American Regional Classic award in 2000.
That said, plenty of Cincinnati chefs have been named semifinalists or finalists for the award in recent years.
Jose Salazar, owner of Mita’s restaurant, Downtown, and Safi, in Over-the-Rhine, has been nominated six times as a semifinalist and as a finalist twice. This year, Jordan Anthony-Brown, the chef and owner of The Aperture, in Walnut Hills, was named a semifinalist for Best Emerging Chef in America, though he didn’t make it to the finalist round.
The most nominations Cincinnati saw during a single year was 2023 when both Francisco Alfaro, the chef de cuisine at Mid-City Restaurant, Downtown, and Hideki and Yuko Harada, the chef/owners of Kiki in College Hill, were nominated for Best Chef Great Lakes.
That same year, Elaine Uykimpang Bentz, of Cafe Mochiko, in East Walnut Hills, was a finalist for Outstanding Chef or Baker in the U.S. Jose Salazar’s Mita’s was nominated for Best Restaurant in the United States and Nolia Kitchen, a Southern-themed restaurant from New Orleans transplant Jeffery Harris, was nominated for Best New Restaurant in the United States.
In 2024, semifinalists for the Best Chef Great Lakes category included four: Jeffery Harris of Nolia Kitchen, Erik Bentz and Elaine Uykimpang Bentz, of Cafe Mochiko in Walnut Hills, and Jose Salazar, for his Downtown restaurant Mita’s. Only Salazar made it through as a finalist that year.
Still, having two finalists at this year’s awards was nothing to sneeze at. Like we say about the Reds and the Bengals, there’s always next year.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati comes up short at this year’s James Beard Awards
Reporting by Keith Pandolfi, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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