One Seattle Chef Wins a James Beard Award for 2016

Renee Erickson accepts her James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Northwest. [Photo: Official livestream/James Beard Foundation]

Tonight in Chicago the James Beard Foundation announced the winners of its prestigious James Beard Awards for 2016, and Eater dutifully liveblogged the whole shebang. (You can replay the official livestream here.)

There was some great news for Seattle: Renee Erickson is this year's Best Chef: Northwest for her restaurant The Whale Wins. Huge congratulations, especially as she was the only woman to win one of the ten regional chef awards — how long until she's up for the overall Outstanding Chef category?

Props as well to the other local finalists from Erickson's regional category, Mike Easton of Il Corvo and Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi of Joule (who, you'll recall, made it this far despite having the odds unfairly, if accidentally, stacked against them by the Beard Foundation.) There's always next time, gang.

Sadly, Seattle's only contender in a national category, Canlis for Outstanding Wine Program, didn't win. The prize went instead to Bern's Steak House of Tampa, Fla. But restaurateur Brian Canlis is certainly gunning for "cutest Instagram photo" with a charming shot of him tying a bowtie for pal Will Guidara of New York City's Eleven Madison Park.

Tying bowties for best friends since 1997. #jbfa

A photo posted by Brian Canlis (@bcanlis) on May 2, 2016 at 2:59pm PDT

See the entire list of winners here.