Bay Area Chefs Among James Beard Award Winners

The Oscars of the food world were held yesterday in New York, and among top honorees were San Francisco's Nate Appleman of the restaurants A16 and SPQR, who won Best Rising Star Chef (it was his third nomination and first win... he's still eligible because he's under 30) and Douglas Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg (pictured) who won Best Chef, Pacific. Previous winners of the latter award were Craig Stoll of Delfina and Traci Des Jardins of Jardiniere.

The awards are presented by the James Beard Foundation and honor achievement both in cooking and in food and cookbook writing. The Weekly's SFoodie blog called Keane's win a surprise after most of the competitors had called it for David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos.

See a complete list of winners here.