James Beard Semifinalist List Honors Places You Probably Haven’t Been To Yet

By Scott Roeben, on January 22 2026
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Las Vegas Las Vegas Bars Las Vegas Restaurants

In the restaurant world, the James Beard Awards are a very big deal. They’re referred to as “the pinnacle of culinary recognition.” Mostly by, you know, the James Beard Foundation. Just being nominated for a James Beard Award is enough to make a chef spontaneously ejaculate. Why do you think everyone in the food service industry is so jumpy? “The James Beard Awards were announced!” a food service employee will say, and another will reply, “Time to lean, time to clean!” It’s all very awkward and one of the reasons service at restaurants can be so slow sometimes, everyone’s in Human Resources.”

The James Beard Foundation announced its Restaurant and Chef Awards semifinalists for the 2026 James Beard Awards, and a record number of Las Vegas restaurants and individuals were among the nominees.

The awards provide a wonderful opportunity to reflect upon how many great Las Vegas restaurants you haven’t visited yet. We went through the unbearably long list of semifinalists so you can see all of the Vegas-related noms at a glance. There really needs to be a James Beard Award for “Best Las Vegas Blog If You Define ‘Best’ by Snark and Also Least Effort Exerted.”

Take that, chef-driven foam-forward sensory interventions.

We would begin our story with an overview of the James Beard Awards and James Beard Foundation, but in our experience, nobody gives a shit.

As with any organization involving human beings, the James Beard Foundation has been rife with drama, corruption and a metric hell-ton of straight-up racism.

In 2020, the James Beard Foundation canceled its awards after somebody pointed out there were no black winners in its 23 award categories.

Since then, thankfully, racism has been cured, so we can proceed like nothing ever happened.

Here, then, are the 2026 James Beard Awards Semifinalists.

Outstanding Restaurateur

Elizabeth Blau, Blau + Associates (Buddy V’s and Honeysalt)

Emerging Chef

Ellie Parker, Main Street Provisions

Best New Restaurant

Tamba

Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker

Kimberly Mcintosh, Milkfish Bakeshop

Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

Ada’s Wine Bar

Best New Bar

Nocturno

Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service

Bank Atcharawan, Jipata

Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service

Mariena Mercer Boarini, Aft Cocktail Deck

Best Chef: Southwest

Oulay Ceesay Fisher, Calabash African Kitchen
Brian Howard, Sparrow + Wolf
Yuri Szarzewski, Partage
Sarah Thompson, Casa Playa
Jamie Tran, Black Sheep
James Trees, Bar Bohème

As mentioned, this is a record number (14) of semifinalists for Las Vegas bar and restaurant talent.

In other statistics, of the 14 people and places nominated, we haven’t been to 71% of them, mostly because those places aren’t in casinos. Of the 14 nominations, we have not even heard of 57%. We know 21% of the people personally. Elizabeth Blau is fleek AF, James Trees is a pasta wizard and Mariena Mercer Boarini doesn’t just do the cocktails at Aft, she creates all the cocktail menus at Wynn and Encore, making her a straight-up inebriatory goddess (ditto her invention of the Verbena cocktail at Cosmo).

It’s worth mentioning that if you want to try Ada’s Wine Bar (also the work of James Trees), you might be looking in the wrong place. It recently moved from Summerlin to the Arts District. Trees also had a hand in Al Solito Posto in Summerlin, reliably spectacular.

Who was James Beard, you ask? Thanks for asking! Not only have you shown yourself to be keenly curious, you have also provided us with an excellent excuse to further pad our story!

James Beard was presumably a well-known chef and cookbook author in old-timey America, an era we grew up in, and unless James Beard was an alias for Julia Child, he wasn’t as big a deal as he’s made out to be. Beard is credited with convincing America that “cuisine” didn’t have to mean stuffy French restaurants or sad TV dinners. Beard was kicked out of Reed College for being gay (sorry, poor grades) and in 1946 he became the first celebrity chef on TV. He wrote more than 20 cookbooks, opened a cooking school in Greenwich Village and was dubbed the “Dean of American Cookery” by The New York Times. Beard died in 1985, but his awards live on.

James Beard never married, which is a shame, because our “beard” joke would’ve slayed.

Honestly, we just needed a graphic to keep our words from slapping together.

Despite the assertion by some that the James Beard Awards are wonky (yes, that’s the technical term), far be it from us to yuck on anyone’s yum. These awards change the fortunes of businesses and trajectories of professional lives. You don’t even have to win, you just have to be nominated.

Some compare the James Beard Awards to the Oscars, which isn’t really a compliment anymore because what a shitshow those have become. We haven’t seen 70% of the Best Picture nominations. “Sinners” got 16 nominations? And people said members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association drank a lot.

The highest-grossing movie in the U.S. in 2025 was “A Minecraft Movie.” To the credit of the James Beard Awards, Hell’s Kitchen at Caesars Palace was not on the semifinalists list. That is what’s known in literary circles as the “perfect analogy,” by the way.

James Beard Awards are coveted by chefs and others in the culinary industry, so more power to them.

Ultimately, though, it’s not up to some snooty group of food insiders to decide what people and places are worth your attention and dollars.

The restaurant business is extraordinarily demanding, and the people who choose that life aren’t taking an easy path. It’s sweaty and gross and sometimes you have to interact with scumbags like Todd English.

The restaurant business has paper-thin margins and rampant sexual harassment and Karens galore.

And don’t get us started about influencers. It’s possible we are one of them. Can you imagine toiling away in the restaurant business and having some idiot with a Twitter following come in one day, get a crappy slice and deem your restaurant one of the worst in the world? Looking at you Prince St. Pizza. You should not be a thing.

Restauranting is no walk in the park. Folks who work in kitchens have the scars, literal and figurative, to prove it.

The people who succeed in this realm, including those who are honored by industry awards, have our utmost respect and we aren’t just saying that so James Trees will make us a chicken parm sandwich, probably.