James Beard Awards

It was an exciting night for registered dietitians. One of our own Ellie Krieger won a James Beard award for her fabulous book “The Food You Crave.” You can find the full list of winners on the official James Beard blog, in this AP article and in this New York Times article. The Times piece caused a quite a stir tonight because it was posted before all of the winners were announced onstage. So several food twitters in attendance were all a twitter over that. But I digress.

I was disappointed the Chicago nominees didn’t win (including the local chefs and the Chicago Tribune), but the book awards made up for it. Congratulations to Ellie for winning in the “healthy focus” category. Other nutrition-related books that were big winners included Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” and the intriguing book I haven’t read yet ”Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes,” which won cookbook of the year! That’s definitely on my reading list.

For the food Oscars, this was a nice showing for nutrition.

Tagged as: Ellie Krieger, James Beard Awards

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Perhaps you’ve heard. The nominations for the James Beard Foundation Awards were just announced. These are the culinary equivalent of the Academy Awards.

It’s wonderful that Chicago was so well represented! I’m particularly thrilled that Chicago Tribune’s Good Eating was nominated for best newspaper food section. I’ve been fortunate to write for the Good Eating section for the last five years, so I was quite proud (even though I’m just a freelancer!)

Reporter Monica Eng was nominated for two newspaper feature awards, including one with Tribune food critic Phil Vettel. I was also happy that Steve Dolinksy from WLS-TV (ABC-7) was nominated for his food series The Hungry Hound . Steve is a 12-time James Beard winner.

Many Chicago chefs received a nomination — Paul Kahan of Blackbird, Koren Grieveson of Avec, Arun Sampanthavivat of Arun’s, Bruce Sherman of North Pond, Mindy Segal of Hot Chocolate, Richard Melman of Lettuce Entertain You, and Laurent Gras of L20. Even the nominations ceremony was held in Chicago at Frontera Grill!

Besides the celebration for Chicago, I was so happy for a fellow dietitian Ellie Krieger. She was nominated for her fabulous book The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for A Healthy Life. Congratulations Ellie!