Langbaan, and chef Gregory Gourdet win James Beard awards
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Gregory Gourdet of Portland's Kann restaurant won Best Chef Northwest and Pacific at the 2024 James Beard Awards. Photo: Moyo Adeolu/Axios
Langbaan, a 24-seat Thai restaurant, and Haiti-inspired chef Gregory Gourdet, won big at the James Beard Awards in Chicago Monday, winning outstanding restaurant and best chef in the Northwest.
Why it matters: For a second year in a row, Rose City snagged some of the ceremony's top awards on the culinary scene's most prestigious stage.
Context: The James Beard Foundation — named in honor of the iconic Portland-born food writer and chef — gives out 22 accolades annually, all meant to highlight the crème de la crème in categories like baking, hospitality, wine, restaurants and regional chefs.
- It's like the Oscars, but for food.
The big picture: Langbaan is a Thai restaurant known for its fun, flavorful dishes with historical ties.
- While accepting the award, chef Earl Ninsom revealed his wife has been diagnosed with cancer but his staff ran the restaurant whenever he stepped away.
- Langbaan general manager Heaven-Leigh Carey exhorted people to be kind to and nourish each other, and thanked the psychic who approached her on the street and said they were going to win.
Zoom in: After being a semifinalist twice in the past, Sarah Minnick of pizza restaurant Lovely's Fifty Fifty missed the win for outstanding chef, in favor of Michael Rafidi of Albi in Washington, D.C.
- Family-owned Lovely's Fifty Fifty uses produce exclusively from Oregon farms and a whole-grain sourdough base for its pizzas, plus foraged flowers, wild mushrooms and distinctive vegetables.
What they're saying: Asked why Portland is having a moment, Minnick told the Axios Chicago red carpet hosts, "You can still start a restaurant there on a really small scale, and (there's) a lot of support from the city for that too."
- "Over the past 16, 17 years in the Pacific Northwest, I've been able to just love salmon and hazelnuts and marionberries, and food carts," said Gourdet in accepting his award.
Between the lines: Going home with an award or not, making it off the long list of semifinalists is résumé-worthy.
- Judges passed on McMinnville's Hayward for the best new restaurant award, instead handing it to Dakar NOLA which makes Senegalese food filtered through New Orleans. Hayward is chef Kari Shaughnessey's first venture on her own and received plenty of prior national buzz.
- Meanwhile, local foodies and croissant connoisseurs everywhere will continue to line the block around JinJu Patisserie for French-style pastries through a Korean lens from pastry chefs Jin Caldwell and Kyurim "Q" Lee.
- "We have a small, amazing supportive system (in Portland) so we feel the love from outside and inside," Lee, who attended the awards with Caldwell, told Axios Chicago.
Fun fact: Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker went to Atsuko Fujimoto, Norimoto Bakery, and Outstanding Bakery to ZU Bakery, both of the other Portland ... Portland, Maine.
Find a full list of James Beard Award winners here.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Hayward's chef is now going by the name Kari Shaughnessey (not Kari Kihara).