- James Beard Foundation
- Donnie Madia accepting his Outstanding Restaurateur award from Lidia Bastianich
We invited the food world (well, of America anyway) to honor our hot chefs and restaurants, and we wound up paying tribute to restaurant owners instead. But that’s not a bad thing. Last night’s James Beard Foundation Awards, held at Lyric Opera in the first installment of a three-year stop in Chicago, reminded us that just as we often overlook the producers of movies in favor of the directors, our restaurant scene is at least as much the work of entrepreneurs seeking to fill (or create) a market niche, as it is the work of chefs seeking to put their vision on the plate.
Even being out of town for the first time, the Beard Awards leaned strongly toward New York—playing the home game, you could have seemed clairvoyant by shouting out “Batard” or “Christina Tosi” or “Blue Hill at Stone Barns” right before the envelopes were opened. Still, in the end Chicago picked up three awards. The Violet Hour won outstanding bar program; Brindille won best design for restaurants under 75 seats; and one of the figures who has most successfully followed in Rich Melman’s footsteps as an opener of distinct restaurant concepts both high and low, Donnie Madia, won Outstanding Restaurateur after being a runner-up for many years. Where Melman was Talmudically sage, Madia was as rabbit jittery as if it were opening night at a new restaurant as he thanked his partners, including Paul Kahan. After he was finished, he bounded back to the microphone to thank the people he’d forgotten: his wife and kids.
