- Dave Beran/Twitter
- Daniel Boulud congratulates Beard Award winner Dave Beran.
The James Beard Foundation Awards had a year of women last night, with prizes going to celebrated woman chefs such as April Bloomfield (New York’s the Spotted Pig and the Breslin), Nancy Silverton (Pizzeria Mozza and a long history as a leading figure in bread baking), and Barbara Lynch (half a dozen restaurants in Boston)—but the Chicago portion of the awards didn’t have anything to do with that. Dave Beran, chef de cuisine at Next, finally nabbed Best Chef, Great Lakes in his third nomination in three years (for the same award last year and for Rising Star Chef the year before). Rising Star Chef resulted in a tie, half of which went to Jimmy Bannos Jr. of the Purple Pig, even though he’s actually been a chef there longer than Beran has been at Next (but the Beard Awards run on their own time scale that way).
It doesn’t help either that many of the media that lived off Next in its early years have subsequently disappeared or are at least significantly diminished. Just the last couple of weeks brought changes to two more Chicago outposts of New York-based sites, Tasting Table and Serious Eats, which look to be cutting back on Chicago-specific content (disclosure: I have written for both). We’re not seeing as much of Next because we’re not seeing as much of a lot of things in a lot of places anymore.
