Chicago Medals in Two Beard Pre-Events
Chicago Claims Two Early James Beard Awards
Chicago is well represented among finalists for this year’s James Beard Foundation (JBF) Restaurant and Chef Awards, which will be announced tonight during the glam presentation at the Lyric Opera House. But our hometown already has two of the big medallions in its hands.
The five pre-announced JBF Leadership Awards were handed out Sunday at a luncheon held at The Darcy event space in the Fulton Market District, and one of them went to Erika Allen for her work in promoting urban agriculture and food access, justice and equity.
Erika is a co-founder of Urban Growers Collective, which runs eight urban farms — including its flagship in the South Chicago neighborhood — that provide food, jobs, training and community gardens, mainly for residents of under-resourced communities. The Collective evolved out of Growing Power Chicago, which Erika founded as an affiliate of the Milwaukee-based Growing Power organization created by her father, Will Allen, a Good Food and urban farming pioneer.
Erika has been a longtime leader of the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, and also is working toward completion this fall of the Green Era Chicago project, which is building a huge anaerobic digester in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side that will convert tons of trash into useful compost.
Local Food Forum will have more about Erika and Urban Growers Collective later this week.
Also taking home a medal this weekend was Julia Momosé, acclaimed as one of Chicago’s leading mixologists, who creates liquid magic at Kumiko restaurant in the city’s West Loop neighborhood. The JBF Media Awards were held Saturday evening (June 11) at Columbia College in the South Loop, and Julia took the prize for Best Beverage Book with Recipes for her guide, The Way of the Cocktail: Japanese Traditions, Techniques and Recipes, which she co-wrote with Emma Janzen.
Congratulations to Erika and Julia, and let’s root for our other Chicago finalists for tonight’s Restaurant and Chef Awards. You’ll find a guide to our local nominees in this earlier issue of Local Food Forum.
This Week’s Chicago Region Farmers Market
While this is a momentous time for our area’s culinary community, it’s business — and busy-ness — as usual for the area’s mid-season farmers markets. The markets have maintained the momentum from the two pandemic years, driven by rising consumer demand for local, healthy, delicious and sustainably produced food.