Flatiron's Borgo and Chinatown's Lei take home 2026 James Beard Awards
Wine director Lee Campbell and chef-owner Annie Shi give Manhattan two of the night's biggest wins, while a third New York honor lands in Queens.
Chefs
Profiles of the people cooking in New York: line cooks who took over a kitchen, chefs leaving established rooms for forty seats of their own, pastry departments, and the mentors whose training turns up across a dozen menus. Reporting covers technique, sourcing and working conditions alongside the food itself.
Profiles of the cooks running New York kitchens: where they trained, what they are cooking now, and why they left a big room to open a small one.
Tatiana's America: how Kwame Onwuachi turned Lincoln Center into the hardest reservation in New York
Bronx-raised, Nigeria and Louisiana in his cooking, a failed first restaurant behind him — the documented career of the chef who opened the city's most talked-about room in 2022.
Who runs the pass? The kitchen brigade, explained station by station
Sous chef, chef de partie, expo, steward — the command structure of a Manhattan professional kitchen and what each job actually does at service.
Jean-Georges's Manhattan: how an Alsatian cook built the city's widest restaurant map
From Strasbourg's outskirts to Columbus Circle and the ABC blocks — the documented timeline of Jean-Georges Vongerichten's New York and the two-tier model behind it.
The pastry track, explained: how Manhattan bakes its dessert chefs and where the career forks
Restaurant pastry, bakery production, and the plated-dessert specialist — a working map of the pastry kitchen's parallel ladders, timelines, and pay.
How to become a sommelier in New York: the exams, the floors, and what the job actually pays
From back waiter to wine director in Manhattan — the certification ladder, the study math, and the economics of the city's most bookish restaurant job.
Daniel Boulud's Manhattan, mapped: from a farm outside Lyon to the city's longest-serving four-star kitchen
The chef behind Daniel, Café Boulud, and Épicerie Boulud built New York's most durable fine-dining group — a career timeline of how the empire was assembled.
Culinary school in New York, weighed: what ICE, the CIA, and the alternatives actually cost and deliver
Tuition runs from a few thousand dollars for a night-class diploma to five figures for a degree — here is the honest math on whether the kitchen trade needs the classroom.
Chef-owner economics: what it actually costs to put your name over the door in Manhattan
Buildout budgets, prime cost, the 30-30-30 rule of thumb, and why the food is the cheapest part of opening a New York restaurant.
The stage, explained: how New York kitchens run the tryout shift that decides who gets hired
One unpaid-to-paid trial service, two to six hours on a station, and an evaluation that starts before you touch a knife — the staging system that runs hiring in Manhattan kitchens.