This esteemed California chef is a 2022 James Beard award winner. Meet Brandon Jew
Every year the James Beard Foundation gives out its prestigious awards to the top chefs and restaurants in the culinary world.
Many know it as the Oscars of the food industry.
This year, Brandon Jew was recognized as the best chef in California at the June 13 ceremony at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
He’s the co-owner and chef of Mister Jiu’s — a Michelin-starred restaurant nestled in San Francisco’s Chinatown that opened in 2016.
The contemporary Chinese eatery “focuses on Cantonese cuisine spiced by the occasional Sichuan specialty bearing hyper-seasonal local produce and a liberating dash of creativity,” according to the Michelin Guide.
Jew also owns Moongate Lounge, a cocktail bar also in Chinatown.
And he co-owns a counter-service restaurant called Mamahuhu that serves Chinese-American classic dishes like sweet and sour chicken for a reasonable price, according to Eater.
And that wasn’t the only award he earned.
His cookbook, “Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown: Recipes and Stories from the Birthplace of Chinese American Food,” was recognized for a James Beard Media Award. He co-wrote the book with Tienlon Ho.
“Through deeply personal recipes and stories about the neighborhood that often inspires them, this groundbreaking cookbook is an intimate account of how Chinese food became American food and the making of a Chinese American chef,” according to a review of his cookbook.
The James Beard Foundation put off the 2020 and 2021 ceremonies because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating impacts on the restaurant and hospitality industry. But the pandemic wasn’t the only factor.
Final 2020 results didn’t include a single Black chef across 23 categories, The New York Times reported.
And some chefs withdrew their names to make a point, Eater reported. So the culinary organization decided to work with a social justice agency to “remove any systemic bias, increase the diversity of the pool of candidates, maintain relevance.”
The goal was to award nominees who aligned with the foundation’s values of “equity, equality, sustainability, and excellence for the restaurant industry.”
This story was originally published June 14, 2022 at 5:02 PM with the headline "This esteemed California chef is a 2022 James Beard award winner. Meet Brandon Jew."
