Yahoo Sports The James Beard Foundation Honors Chefs With Prestigious Awards. Now It Investigates Them, Too.
In an effort to be more equitable and inclusive, the “Oscars of the food world” has overhauled how it hands out its awards in recent years, but that process has caused frustration even for those in favor of the James Beard Foundation’s reforms.
After canceling the ceremony in 2020 and 2021, the Beards instituted a code of ethics it expected winners and nominees to follow. However, the foundation’s enforcement of that code is drawing criticism, according to a story in The New York Times. The organization has instituted an anonymous tip line to share complaints about nominees that investigators follow up on to ensure the chefs are not engaging in behavior such as abusing staff.
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Chef Sam Fore, a finalist for this year’s awards, told the paper that an anonymous complaint made her the subject of an investigation by the organization. Fore runs Tuk Tuk, a pop-up that provides cuisine inspired by foods she ate while growing up in Lexington, Ky., as the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants. She was interviewed by a Beard investigator over social media posts. One example of what the investigator called possible “bullying” and “targeted harassment” was an Instagram post in support of domestic violence awareness. Although she was later informed that she wouldn’t be disqualified, Fore still felt that the process could do her harm.
“I realize that my presence is a good look for Beard, but I cooked my way across the country to get to this level,” she told The Times. “Now all I’ve done can be dismissed because someone on the internet called me a bully?”
This comes on the heels of Alabama-based chef Timothy Hontzas who was removed from the running for Best Chef: South this year. He went public with his ouster after he received a message that he was disqualified when an investigation by the foundation deemed he violated the ethics code by his yelling at employees and customers. Hontzas didn’t deny the yelling, but believes it didn’t rise to the level of an ethics violation. The disqualification had led to at least three judges resigning, including former winner Vishwesh Bhatt. He was disappointed that not even judges were made aware of a disqualification.
In a sign of how the Beards have approached this new code of ethics in an opaque way, Hontzas is still listed as a nominee on the Beards’ site despite his disqualification. Because the foundation keeps its ethics investigations secret, it doesn’t remove names of disqualified people from news releases or ballots. This means that had Hontzas not revealed the disqualification to the public, he could have attended the Chicago June gala and even received the most votes in the category. The organization told The Times that in that scenario, the second-place nominee would have been awarded.
“We don’t want to be publicly shaming people,” Clare Reichenbach, the foundation’s chief executive, told The Times about the organization’s confidentiality practice. “We are here to celebrate those who are winning.”
The foundation did not respond to a Robb Report inquiry. However, Reichenbach told The Times that the awards “are known as the standard bearers of excellence in the industry. We take that very seriously. She added that “we’ve built a process with great intentionality, that we think has rigor, that reflects our values and our mission, and we stand by it.”
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