MD Restaurant Nominated For 2025 James Beard Award

MARYLAND — The culinary scene in Maryland, as well as nearby DC, is represented in the 2025 Restaurant and Chef Awards nominees announced Wednesday by the James Beard Foundation.

2025 is an important milestone for the James Beard Foundation: It's the 35th anniversary of the awards, considered to be among the nation's most prestigious honors. Awards will be presented in 25 categories this year with an expanded focus on cocktail and beverage service.

Charleston is Maryland's lone nominee. The Baltimore restaurant was nominated for the Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program award. The other four nominees are establishments in Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas and California.

Charleston, located in the Harbor East neighborhood, has a 58-page wine and drink menu. Its most expensive bottles cost over $5,000.

Lindsay Willey serves as the restaurant's wine director.

"The wine program at Charleston is all about the relationship between wine and food," Willey wrote in the wine list. "After a quarter century of watching and tasting chef's very personal cuisine in development I constantly work to understand the balance & content of her dishes and how they relate to the wines in the cellar."

Considerations for the wine menu include:

• "What the growing season is like for farmers in this part of the country.
• "The mood and the taste of our clientele.
• "The individual people who make the wine and their culinary traditions."

"All of this information becomes this giant and ridiculous matrix of information that gives us just enough detail and data to actually do something akin to art," Willey said. "Making the right connections is not formulaic, but it is based on a lot of information. These connections are at the heart of what we strive to create."

Charleston is led by Chef Cindy Wolf, a nine-time James Beard Foundation Award Finalist for best Mid-Atlantic chef.

"Chef Wolf's cuisine is rooted in French fundamentals and the Low Country cooking of South Carolina, engaging both regional and international influence," Charleston's website said.

Neighboring Washington, D.C. is heavily represented in the nominations.

District of Columbia nominees include:

• Outstanding Restaurateur: Scott Drewno and Danny Lee from The Fried Rice Collective (Anju, Chiko, and I Egg You)
• Best New Restaurant: Mita
• Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker: Susan Bae from Moon Rabbit
• Best Mid-Atlantic Chef: Henji Cheung from Queen's English
• Best Mid-Atlantic Chef: Carlos Delgado from Causa and Amazonia

Drewno and Lee, the Outstanding Restaurateur nominee, founded The Fried Rice Collective and opened the first CHIKO location in 2017 in D.C.'s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Today, there are other locations in Dupont Circle in D.C., Bethesda in Maryland, Sterling and Shirlington in Virginia and Encitas in California. The chefs previously drew a James Beard Foundation nomination for Best New Restaurant.

The James Beard Awards, first presented in 1991, recognize exceptional talent in the culinary and food media industries and are often regarded as the “Oscars of culinary arts.” They recognize a range of experiences, from fine-dining restaurants to casual gems.

Winners will be announced Monday, June 16, in a ceremony at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.