Winners of the 2018 James Beard Media Awards will be announced at an exclusive event at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers in New York City on Friday, April 27, 2018,
The James Beard Foundation on Wednesday announced the names nominees for this years’ James Beard Award given to professionals for excellence and achievement in the field of cuisine, culinary writing, and culinary education in the United States.
Among the nominees are three Indian Americans: Chef Vishwesh Bhatt, New York Times reporter Tejal Rao and author Deepa Thomas. They have been nominated for various award categories in their respective fields.
Chef Vishwesh Bhatt, who has been nominated in the “Best Chef: South” category works at Snackbar, a stylish bistro and oyster restaurant that offers Southern and French food in Oxford, Mississippi.
Bhatt has his own method of preparing delicacies by adding Indian flavors to traditional southern ingredients, like catfish, grits or mac, and cheese. Some of his signature dishes include garam masala home fries, daal hush puppies, and okra chaat.
Tejal Rao is a reporter at The New York Times and a columnist for its magazine. She has been nominated for Feature Reporting. Rao has earlier won James Beard Foundation awards for her restaurant criticism at The Village Voice and Bloomberg News. She received the nomination this year for her feature report titled “A Day in the Life of a Food Vendor.” The report tells the story of a Bangladeshi immigrant in the business of selling food on the city’s sidewalks, making him one of 1,000 others, mostly immigrants who do such business in the United States.
Deepa Thomas, an Indian American author, has been nominated for her book Deepa’s Secrets. It has recipes, tips, techniques, menu plans, stories and advice for a healthy life. A graduate of Delhi University with degrees in journalism and political science, Thomas founded Deepa Textiles in 1985 after moving to the United States. She lives with her husband and two sons in the Nob Hill section of San Francisco.
The names of nominees were announced in nearly 60 categories of the Foundation’s various awards programs, including Restaurant and Chef, Restaurant Design, Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America, and Media.
Winners of the 2018 James Beard Media Awards will be announced at an exclusive event at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers in New York City on Friday, April 27, 2018, which will be attended by nation’s top cookbook authors, culinary broadcast producers and hosts, and food journalists.