Judges
Judges for the Art of Eating Prize
The 2023 Panel
Hugh Acheson is a chef, author, and restaurateur who lives in Athens, Georgia. He is the owner of the Georgia restaurants 5&10 in Athens and Empire State South in Atlanta. His cookbook A New Turn in the South won the 2012 James Beard Award for Best Cookbook in the field of American Cooking. He has also written Broadfork, The Chef and the Slow Cooker, Sous Vide, Pick a Pickle, and How to Cook. Food & Wine magazine named him Best New Chef way back in 2002, and the James Beard Foundation awarded him Best Chef Southeast in 2012. Hugh competed in Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, season 3, and starred as a judge on Top Chef, seasons 9 through 13. His thoughts about Canada, college football, crappy television, current events, politics, and old Far Side comics can be found on Twitter and on Instagram @hughacheson.
Jordan Mackay has won André Simon and James Beard awards for his writing on wine, spirits, and food. His work has appeared in Food & Wine, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Decanter, The Art of Eating, Wine & Spirits, and many others. He is the author or co-author of nine books, including the NYT bestseller Franklin Barbecue and the James Beard Award-winning Secrets of the Sommeliers. His books Franklin Smoke and Maison Premiere will be released in spring 2023.
Ligaya Mishan writes for The New York Times and T Magazine. She has won a James Beard Award and been a finalist for a National Magazine Award, and her pieces have been selected for the Best American anthologies in Magazine, Food, and Travel Writing. She has written about books for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Times Book Review. The daughter of a Filipino mother and a British father, she grew up in Honolulu, Hawai’i. She is the co-author, with the chef Angela Dimayuga, of Filipinx: Heritage Recipes from the Diaspora.
Emily Nunn writes The Department of Salad, a highly energetic and popular newsletter that approaches its subject in the broadest terms. She has been an arts editor at The New Yorker, where she created the column “Tables for Two,” and she has been an award-winning features reporter for The Chicago Tribune. Her writing about the arts and about food has been widely published. She is also the author of a memoir, The Comfort Food Diaries. She lives in Atlanta.
Maricel Presilla trained in Spanish and Latin American history and cultural anthropology, is an award-winning author, culinary historian, chef, and restaurateur. Her books include Peppers of the Americas and her magnum opus, Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America. A descendant of cacao farmers in her native Cuba, she wrote The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes. She has worked to revitalize cacao farms and source heirloom cacao and is a founder of the International Chocolate Awards. She is also interested in gender issues and has written about Maya women in cacao.
Bill St. John has for decades written and taught, at the university level and at schools of his own devising, about wine, food, cooking, travel, the history of cuisines, and other subjects. He has contributed to publications such as The Rocky Mountain News, sidewalk.com, The Denver Post, Chicago Tribune, and Wine & Spirits magazine (the last garnered him a James Beard nomination). His writing also has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, and has been syndicated in 99 US newspapers. He once interviewed the nuns who cook for the Pope; lived for seven days as a monk at the Abbey of Orval in order to write about its beer; cooked on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express; roasted bison for Dame Edna Everage (out of costume); traveled 36 hours round-trip to Burgundy to interview Georges Dubœuf on Beaujolais; and his shoulder propped up Julia Child’s head for a quarter-hour nap during an interminably boring meeting. Twice.
Bryant Terry is an award-winning artist and community builder defined by the fluidity with which his practices move between cooking, writing, curating, publishing, conceptualism, social practice, music, and design. Bryant channels the spirit of his blood, intellectual, activist, and artist ancestors to inspire us to work toward a more healthy, just, and sustainable world. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of 4 Color Books, an imprint of Ten Speed Press and Penguin Random House, and he is co-principal and innovation director of Zenmi, a creative studio he founded. He graduated from the Chef’s Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City, and he is a former Ph.D. student who holds an M.A. in history, with an emphasis on the African Diaspora, from NYU, where he studied under Robin D.G. Kelly. Bryant lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two daughters.
The 2022 Panel
Sara Jenkins was born in Maine and grew up in Italy, Spain, and Lebanon. She worked as a chef in Boston, Tuscany, and New York City, where she opened two restaurants, Porchetta and Porsena (now closed). In 2016 she moved to Maine to open Nīna June in the coastal village of Rockport. Nīna June is a Mediterranean restaurant committed to using all the Maine ingredients it can find. Jenkins is co-author of two cookbooks: Olives and Oranges and The Four Seasons of Pasta.
Edward Lee is the chef-owner of 610 Magnolia, MilkWood, and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, Kentucky, and culinary director of Succotash in Washington, D.C. He is the author of the cookbook Smoke & Pickles and the memoir Buttermilk Graffiti, which received the 2019 James Beard Book Award for writing. He was nominated for a daytime Emmy for his role as host of the Emmy-winning PBS series Mind of Chef, and he wrote and hosted the feature documentary Fermented. In 2018, he launched the LEE (Let’s Empower Employment) Initiative to bring more diversity and equality to the restaurant industry.
Maricel Presilla trained in Spanish and Latin American history and cultural anthropology, is an award-winning author, culinary historian, chef, and restaurateur. Her books include Peppers of the Americas and her magnum opus, Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America. A descendant of cacao farmers in her native Cuba, she wrote The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes. She has worked to revitalize cacao farms and source heirloom cacao and is a founder of the International Chocolate Awards. She is also interested in gender issues and has written about Maya women in cacao.
Todd Richards, culinary director of Jackmont Hospitality, mastered his culinary skills under renowned chefs, including Darryl E. Evans. He was the opening chef for One Flew South in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and a semifinalist (twice) for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast. Richards is additionally founder of the Soulful Company Restaurant Group (Lake & Oak Neighborhood BBQ, Kuro, Soul Food & Culture), and he is the author of the praised cookbook SOUL: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes and creator of the podcast SOUL, about the roots of Southern food. His next cookbook, Gold Rice & Table Blessings, will be published in 2023.
Helen Rosner has been executive editor of Eater, executive digital editor of Saveur, online restaurant editor for New York magazine, and a cookbook editor. She is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker, and she lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Kayla Stewart is a columnist at The Bittman Project, and her work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Southern Foodways Alliance’s Gravy, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, and Texas Monthly. Stewart served as a Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia and was awarded the UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship. She is co-author of the forthcoming Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island.
Frank Stitt, a native of rural Alabama, is the chef of Highlands Bar & Grill, Bottega, Café Bottega, and Chez Fonfon in Birmingham, Alabama. Earlier in life, he worked in various San Francisco Bay Area restaurants and met Alice Waters, who introduced him to Richard Olney, whose assistant he became in Provence. Stitt has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance, and in 2011 he was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. In 2018, Highlands Bar & Grill received the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant. He is the author of Frank Stitt’s Southern Table and Bottega Favorita.
The 2021 Panel
Sara Jenkins was born in Maine and grew up in Italy, Spain, and Lebanon. She worked as a chef at two restaurants in Tuscany and four in New York City before opening her own East Village storefront, Porchetta, specializing in that succulent Tuscan and Roman pork roast. She then opened her sit-down restaurant, Porsena, recently closed, drawing on her Italian childhood. In 2016, she opened Nīna June in the coastal village of Rockport, Maine, where she applies a Mediterranean sensibility to Maine food. Jenkins is co-author of two cookbooks: Olives and Oranges and The Four Seasons of Pasta.
Edward Lee is the chef-owner of 610 Magnolia, MilkWood, and Whiskey Dry in Louisville, Kentucky, and culinary director of Succotash in Washington, D.C. He is the author of the cookbook Smoke & Pickles and the memoir Buttermilk Graffiti, which received the 2019 James Beard Book Award for writing. He was nominated for a daytime Emmy for his role as host of the Emmy-winning PBS series Mind of Chef, and he wrote and hosted the feature documentary Fermented. In 2018, he launched the LEE (Let’s Empower Employment) Initiative to bring more diversity and equality to the restaurant industry.
Maricel Presilla trained in Spanish and Latin American history and cultural anthropology, is an award-winning author, culinary historian, chef, and restaurateur. Her books include Peppers of the Americas and her magnum opus, Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America. A descendant of cacao farmers in her native Cuba, she wrote The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes. She has worked to revitalize cacao farms and source heirloom cacao and is a founder of the International Chocolate Awards. She is also interested in gender issues and has written about Maya women in cacao.
Helen Rosner has been executive editor of Eater, executive digital editor of Saveur, online restaurant editor for New York magazine, and a cookbook editor. She is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker, and she lives in Brooklyn, New York.