James Beard Awards Weekend in Chicago

Jane, Katie and I attended the James Beard award ceremony on June 14th in Chicago, where the the James Beard Foundation announced the winners of its 2025 Media Awards, which includes books, broadcast media, and journalism. This was the 35th Anniversary of the awards and the air was charged with excitement and positivity.

As we shared in our post delivering the evening’s results, you can view the entire award ceremony which was live-streamed on YouTube. Padma Lakshmi served as emcee for the event. 

I left for Chicago at 5 a.m. from Denver. Since I have not travelled anywhere in the last ten years, air travel today was an eye-opening experience but I survived with the aid of wheelchair help and prayers! Fortunate enough to get an early check-in, we stopped at the Hilton Chicago to leave our bags and unwind for a few minutes before heading to Eataly for lunch at La Pizza and La Pasta.

Friday night we dined at Sarah Grueneberg‘s restaurant Monteverde which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Jane had met Sarah during the Cherry Bombe Jubilee in New York where the chef encouraged us to visit her restaurant. I first learned about Sarah on Top Chef Season 9 (Texas) where she finished in second place. Among her many accolades she was named the 2017 Best Chef in the Great Lakes at the James Beard Foundation Awards.

Her debut cookbook Listen To Your Vegetables: Italian-Inspired Recipes for Every Season is fantastic. There are seven online recipes available to try. I purchased two copies of this amazing book to do a giveaway which will likely be up in early July. Sarah is on a tight schedule creating recipes for Centurion Lounges and by that time she may be able to do a Quick Bites for us.

This most recent season of Top Chef (Canada) featured Bailey Sullivan, a chef at Monteverde who finished in the top three. We have to talk about the outstanding food we were privileged to eat. Jane and Katie ordered the Mozzarella shooter to begin and we ordered a variety of shared plates which included Oma’s green mountain salad and White asparagus salad. Bailey surprised us by bringing out the Artichoke-sunchoke crostini and talked with us for a bit.

For the pasta course, we ordered Gnocchetti con pesto, Sweet pea and sausage gramigna, and the kitchen generously sent out the Cacio whey pepe. To finish the meal we shared bites of the Butterscotch budino. Everything from the service to the food was perfect.

Another highlight of the meal was a visit to our table by Jaime Canete, the husband of Sarah and Managing Partner of the restaurant. He was delightful and told us a little about the upcoming busy weekend. You can find out more about the crew at Monteverde here.

One other note – I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the pasta leftovers – so I took them – I figured cold Monteverde was better than anything from the hotel food section. But fortunately the cab driver I had back to the hotel was hungry and was thrilled to have them! He said, “Darling, you saved me from another night of Subway!”

The next day, Saturday, as I waited in the lobby for Jane to travel to a meet-up for judges who should walk into the lobby of my hotel but Tristen Epps, winner of this season’s Top Chef. I spoke to him for a few minutes and ended up meeting up with him again in the lobby later in the afternoon as I waited for a Levain cookie order.  (I had to bring my husband back something for Father’s Day!) Tristen, as was everyone we met, was kind and down-to-earth.

At the gathering for judges, I finally met face-to-face with many of my fellow board members for the first time. I introduced myself to Duskie Estes who is as wonderful as she appears on Food Network shows – she even came up to me at the Awards later that evening and grabbed my arm to say hello again.

While at the awards on the elevator to take us to the theatre, I came nose-to-nose with Art Smith. I said, “You don’t know me and you don’t need to know me but I love you” which got a laugh from the chef and others.

It was a great ceremony – filled with inspirational speeches from both new and old faces. As I left, I ran into Nicola Lamb who won for her stellar book Sift: The Elements of Great Baking and spoke to her for a few minutes. Right after that I did have a chance to hug and congratulate Rose Levy Beranbaum for her well-deserved Cookbook Hall of Fame award. This honor came 35 years after her first James Beard award for Cookbook of the Year and Baking Book for her original The Cake Bible. Rose was with Jessica B. Harris who presented the award. I praised Dr. Harris on her new book Braided Heritage: Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine.

It was an exhausting and fantastic weekend and best of all I was able to meet Katie and spend time with her and Jane. It made me appreciate our team here at Eat Your Books and the larger overall cookbook community even more.