{"id":691778,"date":"2026-03-30T05:46:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T05:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/691778\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T05:46:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T05:46:20","slug":"dallas-has-another-chance-to-end-the-drought-in-james-beard-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/691778\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas has another chance to end the drought in James Beard awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

It almost seems like Dallas should be covered in Beards.<\/p>\n

The most-recognized Texas chef for a prestigious James Beard Foundation award is a Dallas chef. The Texas restaurant to have gotten the most notice in those annual awards is a Dallas restaurant. Going back to 1991, Dallas has the most nominees and second-most semifinalists of any place in Texas.<\/p>\n

What no one in Dallas food service has done in a quarter-century, however, is win.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really unfathomable to me,\u201d said Stephan Pyles, one of two Dallas chefs ever to win a James Beard award. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we\u2019re this eighth-tier city.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The process to determine Dallas\u2019 next shot at a winner continues Tuesday, with the announcement of the foundation\u2019s 2026 nominees. The foundation announced its list of semifinalists eligible to become nominees in January, which includes six from Dallas. Winners are announced in June.<\/p>\n

Since the last time Dallas won an award, Austin has claimed seven, most recently in 2025.<\/p>\n

Houston\u2019s last win was in 2023. The city is home to five other winners since Dallas last took one home and ties Austin for the most wins in Texas overall, almost double Dallas\u2019 four.<\/p>\n

Places like Galveston and Mission and Brownsville and Taylor and Buffalo Gap all have wins since The Original Sonny Bryan\u2019s on Inwood Road won in the American Classics category in 2000, the most recent James Beard award winner in any chef and restaurant category in Dallas. Originally part of the Southwest region, Texas switched to its own award category in 2020.<\/p>\n

No Texas chef has appeared more often in James Beard award results than Pyles, who has done so 10 times. The fifth-generation Texan won Best Chef Southwest in 1991 for his Routh Street Cafe, one pearl on the string of restaurants he led for nearly 40 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe talent is here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Searching for a reason<\/p>\n

The time since, with no other winners in the city, has left plenty of room for those in the business to guess at a why.<\/p>\n

Paula Lambert, cheesemaker and founder of the Mozzarella Company in Deep Ellum, won in 1998 in a Who\u2019s Who of Food and Wine category. She said it could be that large restaurant groups from Miami or Las Vegas bring chains with them and obscure what homegrown chefs offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe that\u2019s what people see, and it\u2019s just not that interesting,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re missing out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dean Fearing said he feels like he\u2019s been looking over his shoulder for 32 years, waiting for the next Dallas winner. His 1994 win came when he led the kitchen at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, and the category was called Best Chefs in America Southwest. It is the most recent win for any Dallas chef.<\/p>\n

He was nominated again in two categories in 2008, but came up empty-handed. Now at his namesake restaurant in the Dallas Ritz-Carlton, Fearing said it could be that not enough judges make it to Dallas or take it seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sad that that\u2019s it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt should be a longer list.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bruno<\/p>\n

Bruno Davaillon talks to chef de cuisine Jason Maddy (right) while Davaillon prepares a dish at The Mansion Restaurant shortly after becoming executive chef in 2009.<\/p>\n

KYE R. LEE \/ 145072<\/p>\n

Before Bruno Davaillon was managing partner and culinary director for Travis Street Hospitality, he was responsible for The Mansion\u2019s most recent consideration for a James Beard award: 2014, as a semifinalist for Outstanding Service. Two years earlier, he was a nominee there for Best Chefs in America Southwest. In 2019, he was again a semifinalist, this time at Bullion. He said it\u2019s possible that Austin or Houston have deeper wells of restaurant labor, that the sheer numbers of new restaurants stretch thin the available talent.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s fighting for the same people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It could also be, Davaillon said, that while overall quality in Dallas restaurants remains high, no one has broken through from culinary to broader cultural influence the way that Pyles and Fearing \u2013 and, in Houston, Robert Del Grande \u2013 did decades ago with their reimagining of Southwest flavors.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the day, they were doing something exciting in U.S. cuisine,\u201d he said. \u201cIt went beyond Texas. And remember, Texas is bigger than France.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Anastacia Qui\u00f1ones-Pittman, the lack of any one answer draws more attention to the question. She has been a semifinalist three times, in 2022, 2023 and 2024, when she was chef at Jos\u00e9, on Lovers Lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d really like to know what it is,\u201d she said, now a consultant as she works to open her next restaurant, Eledi. \u201cI do work with the Beard Foundation, and I love that work. I\u2019m excited about that work. But it feels like there should be an answer, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Chef<\/p>\n

Chef Anastacia Quino\u00f1es-Pittman prepares a dish from cattle raised in a Texas panhandle feed yard in 2023.<\/p>\n

Tom Fox \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

The James Beard Foundation did not respond to a request for an interview about awards data it considers proprietary.<\/p>\n

The last winner<\/p>\n

Brent Harman\u2019s father, Walker, bought Sonny Bryan\u2019s from the man himself in 1989, when Brent was in high school. He learned the history, like all about Julia Child making it her first stop after dropping her bags every trip to Dallas, and how young chefs like Fearing would hang out at the counter to see just how many secrets they could learn about the recipes and techniques Bryan kept in a lockbox.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know that we were the last,\u201d said Harman, now company president and CEO. \u201cI\u2019m really surprised to hear that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryan himself had been gone 11 years when the restaurant won in 2000. A sale to investors shortly before his death ended eight decades of his family making barbecue in North Texas and 31 years for himself.<\/p>\n

Harman said recognition from the award, and the perception of Sonny Bryan\u2019s as a classic, didn\u2019t mean it couldn\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t evolve. Bryan himself was always learning something, trying something, Harman said, even if there were immutable truths like dipping the onion rings in the sauce.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe started out with girls on roller skates selling malts and maybe a burger, I think,\u201d Harman said. \u201cThere was no dining room when he opened, all the food came out to your car. Sonny was changing things constantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the inspiration for that sat right at the counter.<\/p>\n

\u201cDean learned from Sonny, and I\u2019m sure Sonny learned something from Dean,\u201d Harman said.<\/p>\n

The Mansion legacy<\/p>\n

The Mansion has made 20 total appearances in James Beard awards results, the most of any restaurant in Texas, across the tenures of several of Dallas\u2019 most notable chefs. Built in 1925 as a residence and a restaurant since 1980, it comes in and out of award results through the years, though not since Davaillon\u2019s recognition in 2014. The Mansion\u2019s only win was Fearing\u2019s 20 years earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was my greatest moment at the time,\u201d Fearing said. \u201cWe were doing something down in a place called Dallas, Texas, and needed that recognition to get the word out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"(Left<\/p>\n

(Left to right) Chef Wolfgang Puck talks with Nils Stolzlechner, GM of Omni Dallas Hotel, and a howling Dean Fearing in 2012. Puck came to Dallas to visit his restaurant, Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck. He had just won a James Beard award for lifetime achievement.<\/p>\n

Kye R. Lee \/ File Photo<\/p>\n

Dallas dining has worn many faces since then. The improvisational locavore mastery of Sharon Hage at York Street Cafe. Teiichi Sakurai\u2019s celebration of buckwheat, whimsy and clean technique at Tei-An. The consistent execution and Italy-spiked imagination of David Uygur. The personal and profound menus of Qui\u00f1ones-Pittman. So many more.<\/p>\n

And while chasing awards isn\u2019t a primary focus for most chefs, a win is meaningful. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds cheesy when people say it about the Emmys or the Oscars, but it really is an honor to be nominated,\u201d Qui\u00f1ones-Pittman said.<\/p>\n

She said she makes sure to check the lists of semifinalists and nominees every year so she can text her friends and celebrate them when she sees their names published.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy bar manager is nominated, and it\u2019s so exciting,\u201d she said. \u201cWe tell him it\u2019s part of his title now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fearing said the award comes with real, if intangible, value.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt holds a lot of collateral,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"(Left<\/p>\n

(Left to right) Octavia Flores stacks molds while Paula Lambert stirs a vat of curds with ancho chiles which will become cheese, in 1998. Lambert won her James Beard award the same year.<\/p>\n

Natalie Caudill \/ 112521<\/p>\n

For Lambert, her award meant less friction in getting phone calls returned or securing an introduction to people at places where she might sell her cheese.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t make a lot of those calls anymore, but you could see how it opened doors,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople wanted to talk to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next contenders<\/p>\n

According to the foundation\u2019s rules, anyone can recommend a bar, restaurant or chef for an award. That includes chefs, who can suggest themselves or their establishments. The foundation\u2019s judges and awards subcommittee members \u2013 the latter a volunteer group of industry professionals, academics, writers and reviewers that changes every year \u2013 also search on their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t know what it is about Dallas,\u201d Lambert said. \u201cIt\u2019s very interesting that it\u2019s been so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the Mansion, the Dallas restaurant most familiar to James Beard voters is Revolver Taco Lounge and its Pur\u00e9pecha Room in Deep Ellum, with seven semifinalist finishes since 2018 and a nomination in 2025 for Regino Rojas as Best Chef: Texas.<\/p>\n

The eighth for Lucia, in Bishop Arts, came this year. Maggie Huff is a semifinalist in the Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker category. The restaurant\u2019s other seven nods, most recently in 2024, highlight Uygur, a chef whose early career included prepping the famous mushroom soup at the much-missed Grape.<\/p>\n

Should Huff not win her category, Dallas is home to five more hopefuls who could break the city\u2019s 25-year winless streak: <\/p>\n