I knew Going into Monday night's James Beard Foundation awards that Seattle was unlikely to shake its streak of shutouts. The only local nominees—chefs Johnny Courtney of Seattle Met 2024 restaurant of the year Atoma and Aaron Tekulve of top special occasion recommendation Surrell—were competing against both each other and the rest of the Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific category.  Ryan Roadhouse of Portland's Nodoguro ended up winning, and Portland snagged additional hardware with Scotch Lodge's Outstanding Bar nod. 

What I didn't know ahead of time was just how angry I'd feel as I watched Seattle get shut out again from the prestigious awards, sometimes referred to as the Oscars of the restaurant world. The last time a Seattle chef or restaurant won was in 2019, when then-Canlis chef (now Tomo) Brady Williams won for Best Chef Northwest. (The awards were on hiatus in 2020 and 2021, making this the fifth ceremony with nothing for Seattle.)

That means the drought extends back so far that none of the restaurants whose resilience we profiled in our Class of 2020: 5-Year Reunion have won, though all three —Seattle Met 2020 restaurant of the year Musang, Off Alley, and Local Tide—match up favorably against the rest of the country. If I were in the business of handing out awards, I'd be awarding the Pham sisters (Seattle Met 2023 restaurant of the year The Boat and Phở Bắc Sup Shop) one for Outstanding Hospitality, Christina Wood of Temple Pastries one for Outstanding Baker, and many more.

Seattle is probably one of the most difficult places in the country to run a restaurant, and definitely one of the most expensive. Sadly, that isn't factored into the awards. As someone who examines the industry up close, I often think to myself that you'd have to be crazy to open a restaurant here. Still, people do it every single day—to the extent that I have a miles-long list of contenders that I need to get to for this year's best new restaurant list, each one more brilliant, creative, and fascinating than the last. I'm eternally delighted we have just the exact brand of utter nutcase that chooses to open a restaurant here in spades: the ones cooking a Singaporean-tinged tasting menu, lighting the Thai restaurant scene on fire, turning out perfect Venezuelan plantains, and reinventing the entire concept of a restaurant to adapt to the changing economy.

You can find the full list of 2026 James Beard Award winners here, or go back to the longlist of semifinalists that actually contains nods to some Seattle folks, including Seattle Met 2025 restaurant of the year Little Beast for Best New Restaurant and Ahmed Suliman of Café Suliman for Emerging Chef. Suliman may not have made the nominee list, but he certainly continues to emerge—this week, with the opening of his Chinatown–International District cocktail bar, ShibShib on Wednesday.