2025 James Beard Best New Restaurant Award winners Jeanie Janas Ritter and Chef Adam Ritter on combining French techniques with Minnesota ingredients and risking everything to open a restaurant where others went bust
Classically trained chefs Jeanie Janas Ritter and Adam Ritter shared a culinary journey working at great and Michelin-starred restaurants throughout the US and internationally before coming back to their midwestern roots and working in Minneapolis, first for someone else, then taking the risk of opening a place of their own. Their venture, Bûcheron, French for lumberjack, was an instant hit, embracing the French bistronomy movement that marries fine dining with comfortable surroundings. And they embrace a further marriage—French techniques
and Minnesota ingredients in creating a menu that features such standouts as Fois gras, venison tartare, even eel. And yes, they were recently named the Best New Restaurant in America in the 2025 James Beard Awards.
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2025 James Beard Awards Outstanding Restaurant co-owner and master sommelier Bobby Stuckey on featuring amazing food from an Italian region few people have ever heard of
Bobby Stuckey entered the culinary world as a teenaged dishwasher
and worked his way up through a range of front of the house positions until he achieved the rarely awarded rank of Master Sommelier and became a multi-award-winning restaurateur. The centerpiece of the restaurant group he co-owns, Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colorado, which holds a Michelin star, has just won the James Beard Award as America’s Outstanding Restaurant, the fourth James Beard Award it has accumulated since 2008. Earlier in his career, Stuckey worked at The
French Laundry, where his team earned that esteemed restaurant a James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine Service. Frasca features the cuisine – and wines – of Italy’s sub-alpine Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, created and served through the lens of Colorado.
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Portland Chef Cathy Whims on the secrets to cooking in Italy, being tutored by the legendary Marcella Hazan, and helping turn Portland, Oregon into a culinary force
Chef Cathy Whims was at the forefront of the culinary revolution in Portland, Oregon and decades later she retains that position there. Her Nostrana Italian restaurant continues to dish up the kind of regional cooking truly enjoyed in the small towns and villages of Italy, bolstered by great Oregon ingredients, and her pizza is listed among America’s fifty best. She reminisces about truly discovering Italian cooking on her first visit there, and about being taught by Marcella Hazan who, after dining at Whims’s first Portland restaurant, invited the chef to study with her in Venice. Whims now owns multiple restaurants in Portland and recently released her first cookbook.
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2025 James Beard Best Chef-Texas Thomas Bille on creating great food through the lens of a first generation Mexican American, risking everything on a dream, and rebuilding after losing it all
Chef Thomas Bille describes his cooking at his suburban Houston restaurant Belly of the Beast as driven by “a love for food that warms your soul and speaks to our ancestors.” A child of Mexican immigrants, Bille grew up with great food – his father was a professional chef and his mother a fabulous home cook – and as a self-described latchkey kid he was making French toast and spaghetti for himself by the age of 8. He went on to attend cooking school, then got most of his experience in Los Angeles before moving to Texas and opening Belly of the Beast. He was on the verge of financial disaster when, finally, recognition came, and with it, the crowds. Then he had to rebuild after a hurricane ravaged his restaurant. In awarding Belly of the Beast a Bib Gourmand, the Michelin Guide, noted that the “twists and turns” in his Mexican inspired cooking, “make for immensely satisfying courses that feel bold and balanced.” And where else will you find Wagyu birria?
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Bonus Episode - A visit to Brennan's for the art and theatre of Banana's Foster
This special bonus episode comes from the folks at Gravy, a production of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Gravy shares stories of the changing
American South, and in this episode, producer Eve Troeh takes us to Brennan’s, an iconic restaurant in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, where spectacle and tradition come together over a flambé pan. At Brennan’s, servers don’t just deliver dessert; they ignite Bananas Foster tableside in a performance perfected over decades. But behind the fire and flourish is a demanding skillset and an old-school apprenticeship that’s anything but simple. We meet the servers who’ve mastered the flame, and explore how this tableside ritual continues to evoke an era of elegance, even as restaurant culture evolves. For more stories from
the South, follow Gravy wherever you get your podcasts or visit
southernfoodways.org.
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Emmy Winner, International Acclaimed Journalist, Executive Producer, Food & Travel Lover, and Creator of the Beloved show “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” David Page takes us deep into the world of chefs, restaurateurs, and everything “foodie” from the nationally and internationally awarded to the locally loved on Culinary Characters Unlocked. New episode every Tuesday.
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