- Michael Gebert
- Paul Kahan at the Publican, where he hosted his own honors
“New York usually hosts the stars of the culinary industry, but here in Chicago we produce them,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with perhaps a bit too much Second City aggressive defensiveness. As was demonstrated by his tribute to Charlie Trotter at yesterday’s James Beard Foundation Awards announcement of the 2014 nominees, held at the Publican, Chicago doesn’t need to bluster about having an important place in the culinary world.
Some of that was just luck of the draw—frequent past nominees such as Monica Eng and the Reader’s Mike Sula simply didn’t have star pieces to enter this year. The one piece everyone expected to be nominated—Kevin Pang’s moving (and multimedia-tricked-out) profile of Curtis Duffy in the Tribune—is also the sort of thing that has to compete against the top food writers nationwide for one of three slots, tough odds for any piece.
