
Highly respected annual awards honoring exceptional culinary talent, creativity, and excellence within North America's food and beverage industry.
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Chicago, United States
Among Chicago's most decorated bars, Kumiko has earned a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar alongside a World's 50 Best global ranking of #97 — credentials that place it in a narrow peer set of American bars operating at the highest level of craft and intention. Open Wednesday through Sunday from 6pm on West Lake Street, it represents Chicago's case for holding its own against any drinking city on the continent.

Boulder, United States
Frasca Food & Wine on Pearl Street holds a Michelin star and the 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant, making it the most decorated table in Colorado. The kitchen draws exclusively from Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a mountainous northeast Italian region where Slavic, Austrian, and Mediterranean influences converge, matched by a 910-selection wine list with deep Italian and French depth.

New York City, United States
Superbueno on First Avenue in the East Village has earned its place among New York's most decorated bars through a combination of Mexican heritage, technical cocktail craft, and a hospitality ethos that outpaces most of its peers. Recognized with a 2025 James Beard Award and ranked second among North America's Best Bars in both 2024 and 2025, it is the rare place where serious bartending meets a genuinely celebratory room.

New York City, United States
Frenchette arrived in TriBeCa in 2018 and has since grown into the ageless French bistro it always promised to be, earning a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur and a place on La Liste's global ranking. Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr run a 100-seat room at 241 West Broadway where classic bistro cooking, smoked trout beignets to tarte au chocolat, sits alongside quietly confident service and a wine program recognised with a White Star from Star Wine List.

New York City, United States
At 45 Rockefeller Plaza, Le Rock translates the French brasserie format for one of Midtown Manhattan's most architecturally charged addresses. The team behind Frenchette brought the same Francophile conviction here, earning OAD recognition and a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur. Dim Art Deco interiors, a high-velocity bar program, and a menu anchored in classical technique make it one of the more serious French dining rooms in the Rockefeller Center corridor.

New York City, United States
Among New York's three-Michelin-star restaurants, Jungsik occupies a category it effectively created: Korean fine dining built on French technique, not French fine dining with Korean accents. Chef Jungsik Yim's nine-course tasting menu in TriBeCa earned a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef and 98 points from La Liste, placing it in the company of the city's most decorated tables.

New York City, United States
Atomix holds three Michelin stars and ranked No. 1 in North America's 50 Best Restaurants 2025, making it the continent's most decorated Korean fine dining address. Chef Junghyun Park's 12-course tasting menu operates from a 14-seat basement counter in NoMad, Manhattan, where custom ceramics and course cards frame each dish within its Korean culinary context.

New York City, United States
Established in 1937 and revived in 2024 by Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr of Frenchette, Le Veau d'Or is the Upper East Side's clearest argument for classical French cooking as a living discipline. A prix-fixe menu anchored by pâté en croûte and poulet à l'estragon, a 100-label all-natural wine list, and a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur mark it as the most credentialed bistro revival in New York.

Philadelphia, United States
Mawn is a Cambodian-led noodle house on South 9th Street in Philadelphia, where chef Phila Lorn — recipient of the 2025 James Beard Emerging Chef Award — serves bright, salty-sour dishes rooted in Southeast Asian cooking with no fixed borders. A B.Y.O. format and a dining room run with the warmth of a domestic space make reservations here among the most sought-after in the city since opening in March 2023.

Providence, United States
Gift Horse on Westminster Street brings New England seafood into conversation with Korean technique, under chef Sky Haneul Kim, who won the 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast. A Google rating of 4.8 from 126 reviews and an Esquire Best New Restaurants listing from 2023 signal a kitchen that earned its reputation quickly. Providence's most talked-about table is at 272 Westminster St.

Phoenix, United States
Lom Wong brought serious Thai cooking to downtown Phoenix and earned a 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest in the process. Chef Yotaka Martin works through the aromatic foundations of Thai cuisine — galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime — at a level that ranks the restaurant third on Esquire's Best New Restaurants list for 2023. For Phoenix, it marks a shift in how the city thinks about Southeast Asian food.

Nashville, United States
Peninsula on East Nashville's Eastland Avenue holds a 2025 Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast, placing it among the most decorated Southern American kitchens in the region. Chef Jake Howell's cooking draws a loyal local crowd to a neighbourhood that has quietly become one of the city's most interesting dining corridors. A Google rating of 4.6 across 350 reviews signals consistent execution rather than hype-driven novelty.

Austin, United States
Birdie's Austin pioneers "fine-casual" dining where Chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel and James Beard Award-winning sommelier Arjav Ezekiel serve Michelin-quality contemporary American cuisine through an innovative counter-service model, earning recognition as Food & Wine's 2023 Restaurant of the Year.

Spring, United States
James Beard Award-winning Chef Thomas Bille transforms his Mexican-American heritage into extraordinary fine dining at Belly of the Beast Spring, where Michelin-recognized dishes like cherry mole duck and saag paneer mole verde redefine contemporary Mexican cuisine through bold global influences.

Miami, United States
ITAMAE holds a Michelin star and a 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: South, placing it among Miami's most credentialed Peruvian kitchens. Operating out of Miami's Wynwood-adjacent Design District corridor on NE 1st Ave, the restaurant applies Japanese technique to Peruvian ingredients — a Nikkei lineage that has earned consecutive Opinionated About Dining rankings and Esquire recognition since 2023.

Portland, United States
JinJu Patisserie elevates Portland's culinary scene through James Beard Award-winning pastries that blend French technique with Korean artistry. Founded by Las Vegas-trained virtuosos Jin Caldwell and Kyurim Lee, this intimate Williams District bakery creates hyper-laminated croissants, innovative bonbons, and petit gateaux that regularly sell out among devoted locals and national food enthusiasts.

New York City, United States
Semma brought Tamil Nadu's regional cooking to Greenwich Village in 2022 and has not softened its position since. Chef Vijay Kumar's 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: New York State and a Michelin star confirm what the room already signals: this is South Indian food argued on its own terms, with fermented dosas, gunpowder spice, and falling-apart lamb that answer to no fusion brief.

Chicago, United States
Kumiko occupies a precise position in Chicago's Japanese dining scene: part tasting-menu restaurant, part James Beard Award-winning bar program, with the two disciplines operating at the same level of craft. The kitchen's Japanese-inflected tasting menu and Julia Momosé's spirits collection hold equal weight here, making it one of the few $$$$-tier venues in the city where the drink program is not an afterthought.

St. Paul, United States
Myriel in St. Paul's Mac-Groveland neighborhood translates a Scandinavian-inspired, forage-and-farm philosophy into a restrained tasting menu that earned chef Karyn Tomlinson the 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest. Vintage china, muted neutrals, and whole-animal sourcing from local farms define the room and the plate in equal measure. It is among the most decorated destination-dining addresses in the Twin Cities.

Los Angeles, United States
Kato occupies a spare, art-hung room in the redeveloped LA Terminal Mart in Downtown LA, where a 10-course tasting menu reframes Taiwanese and San Gabriel Valley references through precise contemporary technique. Jon Yao holds a Michelin star and the 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: California. The wine program, built around 2,665 selections and an exclusive Kato savagnin bottling, competes for attention with the kitchen.

Washington D.C., United States
Causa occupies a 20-seat tasting counter on the first floor of Blagden Alley NW, where chef Carlos Delgado's Nikkei menu moves through coastal Peru, the Andes, and the Amazon in a single sitting. The restaurant earned a Michelin star in 2024 and the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2025, placing it among Washington D.C.'s most decorated small-format rooms. Open Wednesday through Saturday evenings only.

Caldwell, United States
Amano in Caldwell, Idaho earned the 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mountain under Salvador Alamilla, placing it among the most decorated restaurants in the Mountain region. Located at 802 Arthur St, it represents a rare concentration of culinary recognition in a small Idaho city. For anyone tracing where serious American cooking is happening outside the coastal centers, Caldwell is now on that map.

Baltimore, United States
Charleston holds a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program alongside AAA 5 Diamond recognition, placing it among the most decorated dining rooms in Maryland. Under chef Cindy Wolf, the restaurant operates from Baltimore's Inner Harbor at 1000 Lancaster Street, drawing regulars who treat an evening here as a structured ritual rather than a casual dinner. The beverage program, in particular, sets a national benchmark rarely matched outside major coastal cities.

Chicago, United States
Two Michelin stars, a 2025 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes, and a La Liste score of 93 points place Oriole at the serious end of Chicago's tasting-menu tier. Chef Noah Sandoval's progressive American format draws on French and Japanese technique, served in a converted West Loop warehouse where guests arrive by freight elevator and dine beneath a ceiling collage above an open kitchen.

New York City, United States
A James Beard Award-winning cocktail bar on the Lower East Side, Superbueno brings Mexican-inflected drinking to First Avenue with the kind of program serious enough to earn Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service recognition in 2025. The bar sits within New York's shift toward transparent, technique-led cocktail formats rather than theatrical concealment. Google reviewers rate it 4.3 across 254 reviews.

Houston, United States
A Montrose fixture on Westheimer Road, Common Bond Cafe & Bakery sits in Houston's mid-tier all-day dining bracket and has earned consecutive Opinionated About Dining Cheap Eats rankings in 2024 and 2025. The format spans café service and serious baked goods in a neighborhood that also houses some of the city's most decorated fine dining rooms.
Find out on Pearl and keep score across every place in 2025 James Beard Awards.
Overview
The 2025 James Beard Awards honored 26 restaurants across 17 American cities, marking a complete refresh from the previous year with all new winners. New York City dominated with seven restaurants, followed by Chicago and Los Angeles. The awards span a range of categories, from Outstanding Restaurant to regional best chef honors, recognizing establishments from Boulder to Baltimore.
This year's awards represent a significant departure from 2024, with zero carryover from the previous edition's 18 winners. All 26 recognized restaurants are new to the list. New York City claimed seven spots, including Superbueno, Jungsik New York, Frenchette, Le Rock, Atomix, and Le Veau d'Or. Chicago placed two restaurants (Kumiko and another), while 15 other cities each secured single wins. The geographic spread extends from coastal cities to inland markets like Boulder and Phoenix, reflecting the awards' nationwide scope. The complete turnover suggests either expanded category definitions or a deliberate shift in recognition criteria compared to 2024, when Basta topped the list.
The 2025 James Beard Awards delivered a complete roster refresh, recognizing 26 restaurants with zero repeats from 2024. New York City took seven of the 26 spots, reinforcing its position as the most-awarded market. The list spans 17 cities across the United States, from Superbueno and Jungsik New York in Manhattan to Frasca Food & Wine in Boulder and Lom Wong in Phoenix. Every restaurant on this year's list is a new addition—the 18 winners from 2024, including top honoree Basta, did not return.
The 2025 James Beard Awards mark a sharp break from the previous year, with all 26 restaurants appearing for the first time. Basta, which led the 2024 list, did not return, nor did any of the other 17 winners from that edition. This complete turnover is unusual for the awards and likely reflects either category restructuring or a one-year eligibility window for certain honors.
New York City's dominance is clear: seven restaurants earned awards, including Superbueno, Jungsik New York, Frenchette, Le Rock, Atomix, and Le Veau d'Or. Chicago follows with two winners (Kumiko among them), while 15 other cities contributed one restaurant each. The geographic range is broad—Boulder, Phoenix, and Baltimore all appear alongside the major coastal markets.
The list includes a mix of categories, though the specific awards aren't detailed here. What's apparent is that the Beard Foundation cast a wide net, recognizing restaurants in markets that don't always dominate national conversations. Whether this year's turnover becomes the new pattern or represents a one-time reset will become clear with the 2026 awards.