PROVIDENCE – “I have a job to do. We all do. We can include everyone in the conversation of cooking.” With those remarks delivered by the very first 2019 James Beard Award winner of the evening Kwame Onwuachi, the tone was set at the Lyric Opera of Chicago as the “Oscars of the food world” were handed out.
The awards are given by the James Beard Foundation, based in New York, created in the memory of the man credited for the first restaurant reviews and first television cooking show. The first JBF awards were given out in 1991. In 2017, the Foundation made a commitment to greater inclusion and diversity in its programs and awards.
Two Rhode Island chef-restaurateurs were in the hunt. Nominated for Best Chef: Northeast were chef-owner Benjamin Sukle for his restaurant Oberlin in Providence and James Mark for his modern “north” eatery also in the city. Mark began “north” off Broadway in Providence then moved it downtown to the Dean Hotel. North was nominated for the first time. This made the third consecutive year Sukle had been nominated for the regional chef award. His 2018 nomination was for Oberlin while his first restaurant “birch” accompanied his 2017 nomination.
Twenty chefs were nominated in the Best Chef-Northeast category and five made it through to the finals including three chefs from the Boston area: celebrity chef Tiffani Faison, proprietor and chef of Tiger Mama, Cassie Piuma, chef and proprietor of Sarma, and Tony Messina, chef of Uni.
The regional awards were presented by popular public radio personality Peter Segal of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” And there was a bit of that feeling in the air as the nominees’ names were read.
The Best Chef-Northeast Beard Award went to Messina. He had the task of following one of the more impassioned acceptance speeches of the night by the Midwest winner Ann Kim, a Korean-American chef-restaurateur and former actress, whose emotions were at the forefront as she related her family’s struggles that brought her to her award.
As the program’s host said at the beginning of the night, “You are all winners.” And James Beard’s own words have never been more relevant: “Food is our common ground.”
Bruce Newbury is a PBN contributing writer.
