New York Newsday
And the Winner Is . . .
Drew Nieporent wins big at the James Beard Awards
by Wayne Robins
May 10, 1995
If Drew Nieporent's musical career doesn't pan out, it's nice that he's got something as safe and stable as the restaurant business to fall back on. That was Nieporent on washboard Monday night, ripping up the Broadway Ballroom of the Marriott Marquis as a member of a chef-heavy Cajun music band that served as an apertif to the James Beard Awards presentation.
But over the next few hours it was Nieporent who was in the spotlight, as he and three of his restaurants won four of the most prestigious of the James Beard Awards, which are the culinary world's version of the Oscars.
Nieporent won the MastcrCard Outstanding Service Award for his flagship Tribeca restaurant, Montrachet. Montrachet and its wine director, Daniel Johnnes, took the Outstanding Wine Service Award. Nobu, the stylish, wildly successful Japanese restaurant owned by Nieporent, Robert De Niro and chef Nobu Matsuhisa, was given the Milliken Best New Restaurant Award. And Traci DesJardins, the chef of San Francisco's Rubicon (co-owncd by Nieporent, De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola and Robin Williams), was the Perrier-Jouet Rising Star, an award given to chefs who are 30 or younger.
While all these restaurants arc familiar to bicoastal show-biz commuters (Matsuhisa's L.A. outpost is a movie-star favorite), it was heartland chef Rick Bayless who was named Farberware Millennium Chef of the Year. Bayless' Chicago restaurants, Topolombampo and Frontera Grill, are both renowned for authentic Mexican cuisine, which he described as "honest ethnic cooking from the genius of generations" when he was inducted into the James Beard Who's Who of Food and Beverage earlier in the day.
The other Who's Who inductees were designer Milton Glaser; Indian cooking authority Madhur Jaffrey; food writer Harold McGee; chefs Daniel Boulud of Manhattan's Restaurant Daniel, and Joachim Splichal of Los Angeles' Patina; food and lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart, and Nahum (Nach) Waxman of Manhattan's Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore, an essential resource center for food writers.
Bayless' victory aside, New Yorkers swept the other major restaurant categories. Le Cirque won the Perrier Outstanding Restaurant Award; François Payard of Restaurant Daniel was named Godiva Liqueur Pastry Chef of the Year, and Marvin Shanken, the cigar aficionado who is editor and publisher of The Wine Spectator, was lauded as the Wine and Spirits Professional of the Year.
There were eight regional chef awards sponsored by Perrier-Jouet champagne. Gray Kunz of Lespinasse at the St. Regis Hotel credited "love, passion . . . and stamina" in the kitchen when he was named Best American Chef in the New York City category. New York locales also swept the three design awards. The Fifty Seven Fifty Seven restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel on 57th Street was judged to have the best restaurant design; Gramercy Tavern the best restaurant graphics, and the Sony Club on Madison Avenue won honorable mention for "a unique dining environment."
The Beard Awards were first given in 1991, when the Beard Restaurant Awards merged with the Tastemaker Cookbook Awards. This year there were 16 cookbook awards categories. Among the winners were "Jewish Cooking in America" by Joan Nathan (food of the Americas category); "The Burger Meisters," Marcel Desaulniers tribute to the hamburger (single subject); "Classic Home Desserts" by Richard Sax (baking and desserts), and "Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home," by the Moosewood Collective (vegetarian). "Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts" by Alice Medrich was named both Cookbook of the Year and winner of the healthy-focus category.
With Mediterranean food the theme of this year's Beard Awards, it was entirely appropriate that Paula Wolfert's "The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean" was named best international cookbook. "I've been writing about the Mediterranean for thirty years, and I'll never finish," Wolfert said. "There's enough for five lifetimes."
The late Bert Greene's "Greene on Greens" was entered in the Cookbook Hall of Fame. It was Greene who opened a gourmet take-out shop called The Store in Amagansett back in the 1960s, before the East End of Long Island became the de rigeur destination of the rich and famished.
Actor Paul Newman and partners A.E. Hotchner and Ursula Hotchner were given the James Beard Humanitarian of the Year award for continuing to donate to charity all profits ($62 million so far) from the Newman's Own line of foods.
The importance of television food programs was underscored by a section of electronic media awards. CNN's Carolyn O'Neil tied herself, winning the best television food journalism category for her program "On The Menu" and for "CNN Presents: Food to Die For," which she reported with Judy Woodruff.
Festivities were televised by cable's Television Food Network and were hosted by the channel's anchorwoman Donna Hanover Giuliani and personality Robin Leach.