James Beard Awards Staying in Chicago Next Two Years

You’ve got to hand it to our mayor. When the guy wants something – at least foodwise – he gets it. A little more than two weeks before the James Beard Awards is set to be held in Chicago (the first time ever outside of New York), the city announced yesterday that the Awards will stay here for at least two more years, in 2016 and 2017.

My first reaction was beaming civic pride, of course, but regular readers to my blog will wonder if I asked about the other part of the Awards, specifically, the Book, Broadcast and Journalism Awards (which are being held April 24th in New York City) to see if those would be moving here as well. The Beard Foundation responded to me on twitter almost immediately, saying sorry, the BBJ section of the Awards would be staying put.

“I never say never, but…” Beard President Susan Ungaro told me, calling me back almost immediately after the news broke. “The media awards are not just for the nominees. There are the publishers, the TV producers and other writers,” she said, referring to my post a few weeks ago, in which I lamented the fact that half of the awards were staying put in NYC. My reasoning in that post was math-related: of the 115 nominees, I had calculated that 60% were coming from outside of the NY-NJ-CT tri-state region, a number contradictory to the Beard’s official calculation. But Ungaro told me my math was flawed, since she said it was the ancillary friends, colleagues and other people who attend the BBJ Awards that tilt the numbers in New York’s favor. Indeed, these media awards have outgrown their space over the past few years, moving this year from Gotham Hall to the larger Chelsea Piers, where more than 550 people are expected to attend – far more than the 115 nominees on the official program. While almost two-thirds of the attendees at the Chef-Restaurant Awards tend to come from outside of the tri-state area, the media awards attract a different crowd.

“I asked our team to look at the numbers, and it was just the opposite,” said Ungaro, who acknowledged the large number of TV, publishing, PR and print industry attendees likely to buy a $350 ticket (nominees get one free ticket).

Ungaro likens the BBJ Awards to the Golden Globes, which have grown, in part, due to the fact they have slowly shifted the journalists, writers, cookbook authors and broadcasters away from the Monday night event, now exclusively devoted to chefs, restaurants and beverage professionals. Those awards will be held at the Civic Opera House here on May 4th.