If you’re looking for the best restaurant in America right now, you’ll want to head to Boulder, Colorado.
Frasca Food & Wine, whose specialty is the lesser known cuisine of Friuli in northeast Italy, snagged the title of best restaurant from the James Beard Foundation at an awards ceremony this week in Chicago. The casually refined 21-year-old restaurant, from chef Lachlan McKinnon Patterson and acclaimed sommelier Bobby Stuckey, specializes in dishes like cappelletto affondato- burnt flour pasta with green and white asparagus and sheeps milk ricotta-and Alaskan halibut with green strawberries, wild ramps and baccala. The vast wine list is world-wide famous; it won Beard’s outstanding wine program award in 2013.
It was the one winning Colorado restaurant in the national awards. Otherwise it was New York City’s night.
Of the 13 big deal national awards, New York dominated with four. Among the big wins for the Big Apple were the title of outstanding restaurateurs, which went to Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, operators of the wildly popular Le Veau d’Or on the Upper East Side, as well as Le Rock, in Rockefeller Center and Frenchette downtown. Outstanding hospitality went to Atomix, from Ellia and Junghyun Park, the gamechanging fine dining Korean restaurant that last year was ranked No. 6 in the Worlds 50 Best restaurant list.
The outstanding chef is Jungsik Yim, chef and owner of Jungsik, the dynamic Korean dining room which made news in New York last year when it broke into the three Michelin star restaurant club.
Outstanding cocktail professional is Ignacio Jimenez, better known as “Nacho,” at Superbueno in Manhattan’s East Village, where the specialty is engaging riffs on classics like the vodka y soda, a crystal clear drink mixed with guava and pasilla. “I can’t describe how honored I feel to represent cocktails and their crucial role in hospitality,” he said, after the win.
Jimenez also spotlighted the hard working Latin American restaurant community that he represents. “I’m largely motivated by representing my heritage, both as a Mexican and as a New Yorker. It shines a light on the work that my community does every day and is a huge platform to create more opportunities for those that look like me, who aren’t always afforded the same opportunities and come from where I come from.”
Likewise, Vijay Kumar, who was named best chef: New York in the regional awards for his cooking at Semma downtown, paid tribute to his native country and current hometown. “For one of the grandest cuisines in the world, Indian food has been overlooked for far too long and it has been incredibly powerful to reclaim that unapologetically with such regionality and emotion. And there’s no better place to do it than New York.”
Among the other regional chef winners was Nando Chang, who won the title best chef South for his outstanding Nikkei cuisine at Itamae AO in Miami.The winners were named at Chicago’s Lyric Theatre. The restaurant awards, which launched in 1991, have been based in Chicago since 2015. The city will host the awards through 2027. But its long tenure as host did not result in more than two awards for the night: Kumiko was named outstanding bar and Oriole’s Noah Sandoval won best chef: Great Lakes. Ironically, before the awards set up shop in Chicago a decade ago, they were based in New York. Organizers thought that moving them away from the Big Apple would help spread out the national awards across the country. But this year, that didn’t help; New York’s hospitality community was unstoppable.
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James Beard Award 2025 Winners
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Outstanding Restaurant
Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder, Colorado
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Outstanding Restaurateurs
Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, Frenchette, Le Veau d’Or, and Le Rock, New York City
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Outstanding Chef presented by Hilton
Jungsik Yim, Jungsik, New York City
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Emerging Chef
Phila Lorn, Mawn, Philadelphia
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Best New Restaurant
Bûcheron, Minneapolis, Minnesota
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Outstanding Bakery
JinJu Patisserie, Portland, Oregon
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Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker
Cat Cox, Country Bird Bakery, Tulsa, Oklahoma
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Outstanding Hospitality
Atomix, New York City
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Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program
Charleston, Baltimore, Maryland
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Outstanding Bar
Kumiko, Chicago
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Best New Bar
Identidad Cocktail Bar, San Juan, Puerto Rico
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Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service
Arjav Ezekiel, Birdie’s, Austin, Texas
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Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service
Ignacio “Nacho” Jimenez, Superbueno, New York City
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Regional Best Chefs
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Best Chef: California
Jon Yao, Kato, Los Angeles
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Best Chef: Great Lakes (IL, IN, MI, OH)
Noah Sandoval, Oriole, Chicago
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Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, PA, VA)
Carlos Delgado, Causa and Amazonia, Washington, D.C.
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Best Chef: Midwest (IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD, WI)
Karyn Tomlinson, Myriel, St. Paul, Minnesota
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Best Chef: Mountain (CO, ID, MT, UT, WY)
Salvador Alamilla, Amano, Caldwell, Idaho
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Best Chef: New York State
Vijay Kumar, Semma, New York City
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Best Chef: Northeast (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT)
Sky Haneul Kim, Gift Horse, Providence, Rhode Island
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Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific (AK, HI, OR, WA)
Timothy Wastell, Antica Terra, Amity, Oregon
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Best Chef: South (AL, AR, FL, LA, MS, PR)
Nando Chang, Itamae AO, Miami
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Best Chef: Southeast (GA, KY, NC, SC, TN, WV)
Jake Howell, Peninsula, Nashville
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Best Chef: Southwest (AZ, NM, NV, OK)
Yotaka Martin, Lom Wong, Phoenix
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Best Chef: Texas
Thomas Bille, Belly of the Beast, Spring, Texas
