This is L.A.’s big year for James Beard Awards — and what that means

“Awards and recognition mean everything, and they mean nothing.”

That’s how I concluded my thoughts this time last year on the results of the annual James Beard Foundation awards. In 2022, Los Angeles claimed no winners for either restaurants or media. (For its timelessness and community activism, Casa Vega in Sherman Oaks did last year score an America’s Classic award, a category decided solely by the foundation’s restaurant and chef subcommittee rather than the voting body as a whole.) My civic pride for the city felt rankled, but I’ve been observing award seasons long enough to know that parsing is pointless and that everything is cyclical.

Case in point: This year, with the restaurant and media awards combined that were announced last weekend, L.A. took home more Beard honors than any other city. Perennial frontrunners like New York and San Francisco were shut out of national awards completely.

We won big, L.A.

In purest subjectivity, the restaurant winners were extra gratifying because they went to genuinely deserving people and places.

The shock of the night was Ototo, the Echo Park sake and snack bar that’s the next-door sibling to Tsubaki, both run by Courtney Kaplan and Charles Namba. The win came from a change in a category: This year the “Outstanding Wine Program” became “Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program.” That’s an unwieldy mouthful, and technically Ototo does offer a handful of wines by the glass and bottle, but most of us come to drink and learn from the most nuanced selection of sake in a bar anywhere along the West Coast.

I have raved plenty about the place before. Kaplan has spent decades understanding the complexities and varieties of the beverage and building relationships with brewers in Japan. She’s ever more focused on “nama” (the word translates as “raw” or “fresh”), a class of seasonal sakes that have gone through one or no rounds of pasteurization — most sakes we drink have been pasteurized twice — and often taste bright and energetic. Lately Ototo has been hosting more sake classes and tastings with brewers and distributors; Kaplan lists them on Instagram.

So our best sake bar was the “surprise!” The “it’s about time!” happened for Margarita Manzke; this was her eighth nomination as either a semifinalist or nominee in the pastry chef category. In their use of market fruits and in the respectful ways they combine flavors that express many cultures, Manzke and her team embody Southern California in the daily selection that fills République’s pastry cases. I’m braving the long lines this weekend for a celebratory ube brioche and slices of matcha-black sesame-dulce de leche poundcake (far more subtle than the ingredient list suggests) and peach-blackberry pie.

Margarita Manzke, center, took home the James Beard Award for best pastry chef after eight nominations.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Four of the five nominees for best chef: California were in our region: Gilberto Cetina of Holbox in Historic South-Central; Brandon Hayato Go of Hayato in Row DTLA, our No. 1-ranked restaurant in The Times’ current 101 Best Restaurants guide; Justin Pichetrungsi of Anajak Thai in Sherman Oaks; and Carlos Salgado of Taco María in Costa Mesa.

You’ve probably heard by now that Pichetrungsi took home the prize. He delivered an eloquent speech centered on his parents, who started the restaurant in 1981. Anajak Thai was The Times’ 2022 Restaurant of the Year, and Pichetrungsi was also one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs last year, so the accolades keep coming. My only regret about all the attention is that often the only reservation available at Anajak is at 4:15 p.m. three weeks ahead on a Wednesday. Persist, and don’t overlook the incredible wine program once you’re finally there.

Among the victories on the media side, it was wonderful to see Diep Tran, whose Good Girl Dinette many of us still miss, win for her personal essay in Food & Wine about young culinary ambitions and her grandma’s glee at her failures. Kyla Wazana Tompkins, who teaches at Pomona College, took the honors in the other personal essay category (this one without recipes) for her piece “On Boba,” which appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

In the cookbooks division, Kevin Bludso — the man behind Bludso’s Bar & Que — won for “Bludso’s BBQ Cookbook: A Family Affair in Smoke and Soul,” which was on The Times’ list of the best cookbooks of 2022. It was co-written by L.A. writer and chef Noah Galuten.

As Stephanie Breijo detailed earlier this week, the Beard awards were not without controversy. Several publications reported on the foundation’s practices in investigating anonymous claims against nominees whose actions might have violated its code of ethics. It’s messy, and awards committee leaders gave quotes broadly acknowledging the process needs further consideration.

It’s always been part of the mix to debate the machinations behind the Beards. The scrutiny won’t ever go away, and it shouldn’t. I will also say: I won the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award from the foundation this year, for the first time in my two-decades-plus career as a critic, and it’s meaningful to me. I’m lucky to have had meaty subjects in Poncho’s Tlayudas, Pearl River Deli and, yes, Anajak Thai.

Awards are complicated. Next year surely won’t look like this year.

Also

— Drag brunch! Lisa Boone, Julia Carmel, Danielle Dorsey and Astrid Kayembe compiled a list of 13 places to celebrate Pride, with a beautiful intro by Danielle recapping the art form’s ancient and recent history.

— Stephanie has details on lauded chef Miles Thompson, who returns to the scene with an indefinite pop-up inside Hotel Normandie in Koreatown.

— The headline on Jenn Harris’ latest column says it all: “The new L.A. sandwiches I can’t stop eating.”

Xotica Erotica performs at the queer-owned Beach Garden Social Club in Long Beach.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)