Chefs and restaurants in Charleston, Columbia, Greenville and Bluffton were named 2023 James Beard Award semifinalists on Jan. 25.
Chef Daniel "Dano" Heinze of Vern's in Charleston and Greenville's Dayna Lee-Márquez of Comal 864 earned spots in the Best Chef: Southeast category, while Bluffton's Bernard Bennett of Ọkà n is among a list of 20 Emerging Chef semifinalists.Â
Columbia earned three nominations, highlighting the city's growth in the food and beverage sector.Â
Comal 864 on Woodside Avenue in the City View community in Greenville opened in November 2021 and replaced the Woodside Bistro. File/Eric Connor/Staff
Jessica Shillato of Spotted Salamander Café and Catering joined Heinze in the Best Chef: Southeast category, while Lula Drake Wine Parlour earned a semifinalist nod in the Outstanding Hospitality category. CITY GRIT Hospitality Group (Il Focolare Pizzeria, City Grit and smallSUGAR) is one of 20 nominees in the Outstanding Restaurateur category.Â
Dano Heinze's nomination comes just six months after he and his wife Bethany opened the restaurant named after his grandfather in the 41 Bogard St. space previously occupied by Ken Vedrinski’s Trattoria Lucca. Vern's has quickly become one of the hardest seats to snag in the Charleston area, as Heinze dazzles diners with house-extruded pastas, ever-changing mains and a tarragon butter-flecked escargot special that has earned a permanent spot on the menu. All this pairs with a vibrant wine list curated by Bethany.Â
"The flood of text messages came as a true surprise this morning. If it wasn’t for our team, our vision would have never become as clear as it has in the last six months," Dano Heinze said. "We are incredibly humbled by the acknowledgment and excited for the future of Vern’s."
Charleston restaurant Butcher & Bee was one of five James Beard Award Outstanding Restaurant finalists in 2022, when the foundation brought its awards back after canceling a virtual ceremony scheduled for September 2020 and announcing that it would begin a yearlong initiative to audit and overhaul the awards process, with intent to remove systemic bias. This came after several news outlets reported on a lack of diversity among judges and award winners.Â
The foundation has since committed to changes that include adding more people of color as committee members and not automatically allowing award winners future voting rights.
The James Beard Awards voting body is made up of a group of volunteer subcommittee members, judges and tasting panelists from around the country. In the coming months, they will visit their assigned semifinalists, scoring each one on "criteria determined by the subcommittee." Semifinalists with the highest average score in each category will be named James Beard Award finalists on March 29.Â
Winners of the restaurant and chef categories will then be announced June 5 at a gala in Chicago.Â
