The James Beard Foundation held its annual chef and restaurant awards on Monday, June 10, in Chicago. The prestigious culinary awards are known as the “Oscars of the food world.”
Parnass Savang and Rod Lassiter of Summerhill Thai restaurant Talat Market were the lone Atlanta and Georgia representatives this year. They were nominated for Best Chef: Southeast. However, the James Beard Award went to Paul Smith of 1010 Bridge in Charleston, West Virginia.
It was a light nominee year overall for Atlanta and Georgia, with only seven restaurants recognized as semifinalists in January. Most of those restaurants joined Talat Market in the Best Chef: Southeast category. Talat Market was the only restaurant to move forward as a finalist for a James Beard Award.
Talat Market began as a Thai food pop-up in 2017 operating from Gato (now Gigi’s Italian Kitchen) in Candler Park, following in the footsteps of Little Bear chef Jarrett Stieber and his pop-up, Eat Me Speak Me.
Savang was Eater’s 2017 Chef of the Year and a 2018 James Beard Rising Star Chef semifinalist. He grew up in the restaurant industry, helping out at his family’s restaurant, Danthai, in Lawrenceville. Savang went on to work at Hugh Acheson’s The National and Five & Ten in Athens and Empire State South in Atlanta. It was while Savang and Lassiter were working together at Kimball House in Decatur that they conceived the idea behind Talat Market.
In 2020, Lassiter and Savang opened Talat Market as a restaurant inside an old neighborhood store on Ormond Street in Summerhill. Here, the chefs serve traditional Thai and Thai-influenced dishes using local and seasonal ingredients, produce, and proteins. The menu features everything from northern Thai beef tartare and green curry with catfish, turnips, and broccoli to flounder with red chili jam and Thai basil and the restaurant’s popular crispy rice salad.
Last year, Michelin recognized Talat Market as a recommended restaurant in the inaugural dining guide to Atlanta.
The Deer and the Dove chef Terry Koval won Best Chef: Southeast in 2023. Previous category winners from Atlanta and Georgia include Mashama Bailey of The Grey in Savannah, Steven Satterfield of Miller Union, Hugh Acheson, Linton Hopkins, and Anne Quatrano.
The James Beard Foundation held its media awards ceremony on Saturday, June 8, in Chicago, ahead of Monday’s chef and restaurant awards. Atlanta food writer and AJC Black culture editor Mike Jordan won the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award for three stories published in Atlanta magazine.
The Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award, named for the legendary LA Times restaurant critic who died from pancreatic cancer in 2018, recognizes “the work of an individual who engages readers through enterprising food and dining coverage, and whose work displays versatility in form, such as reviews, profiles, cooking, quick hits, and hard news.”
“Big shout out to the James Beard Foundation, not just for this award, but for being more and more of a place and community for Black food writers. There need to be more Black food writers. There need to be more Black food editors and more Black food publications,” Jordan said in his acceptance speech. “Shout out to the greatest city in the world: Atlanta, Georgia. This is not just my award. Atlanta is the biggest underdog in the culinary scene.”
Jordan was nominated for the same category in 2023. Former Eater Portland editor Brooke Jackson-Glidden took home the medal for the category last year.
While The Bitter Southerner did not capture a medal in the general interest publication category for 2024, writer Farhan Mustafa received an award for his personal essay “Immigrant Spaghetti” published by the Atlanta-based online and print magazine.