The chef and restaurant portion of the James Beard Foundation Awards happened Monday night in Chicago, and while LA continues to steal some of the West Coast spotlight from the Bay, a couple of prominent awards were won by local folks.

If you pay attention to and track the "Oscars of the food world," the James Beard Awards, and the nominations each year the way some people do the actual Oscars, you would know that after two decades of steady fawning and favoritism toward the Bay Area, the last half decade or so has not been so kind to us.

You can blame the pandemic and a general malaise in the local restaurant world at large, perhaps. But a Los Angeles chef has taken the Best Chef: California prize in three out of the last four years, and the Bay has been completely shut out at the restaurant and chef awards the last three years, taking home nada, despite garnering a modest number of nominations.

Things are a little different this year, and perhaps the judging committee realized they should be spreading the wealth a bit more.

Multi-year nominee and previous Best Chef: Pacific winner Michael Tusk, the executive chef and co-owner of Quince, Cotogna, and Verjus, took home the 2026 prize for Outstanding Chef in the country.

During some acceptance remarks on stage Monday, Tusk thanked his wife and business partner Lindsay Tusk, saying, "I would not be receiving this if it wasn’t for her. She allows me to cook, create and do a lot of the other elements of running a business."

Also taking home a new but prominent award was Kevin Diedrich, the co-owner and master mixologist of Pacific Cocktail Haven and a longtime barman about town. Diedrich, who also owns Kona's Street Market in SoMa, took home the prize for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service, ten years after PCH first opened.

Outstanding Restaurant of the year went to Philadelphia Thai hot spot Kalaya.

And one of the grand dames of Los Angeles, Nancy Silverton (Mozza, La Brea Bakery), took home this year's Lifetime Achievement Award.

In the Best Chef: California category, the odds were in Southern California's favor, with SoCal chefs taking three of the five finalist slots. (The Beard Awards do a long-list/shortlist format with the nominations, with the long list often being very long, and giving many chefs in the country the ability to call themselves a James Beard nominee.)

In the end, the California prize went to Dave Beran of Seline in Santa Monica, who beat out Sarah Cooper and Alan Hsu of the Michelin-starred Sun Moon Studio in West Oakland, and Harrison Cheney of the Michelin two-star Sons & Daughters.

But another peculiarity of the Beard Awards is that chefs are often nominated multiple years in a row, so these chefs could have another shot at the prize next year.

The last SF chef to win the Best Chef: California prize was Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu's, who won in 2022. Previously, when it was still called Best Chef: West, Dominique Crenn won the award in 2018, and SF chefs including Corey Lee of Benu, Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski of State Bird Provisions, and Daniel Patterson of Coi helped dominate the category for a decade. Tusk won the award when it was called Best Chef: Pacific in 2011.

Related: Bay Area Garners a Few James Beard Nominations, Gets Shut Out of Several Major Categories, Again