Restaurants and bars in SF and all around the Bay have been “long-listed” for the 2026 James Beard Foundation Awards, including Happy Crane, Sons & Daughters, and House of Prime Rib.

San Francisco has been mostly snubbed for several years at the James Beard Awards, following a couple of decades in which the city figured prominently in the annual “Oscars of the food world.” This can be chalked up, in part, to an ebb tide in local restaurant openings, and to the awards facing criticism about lack of diversity in 2020 — to which the James Beard Foundation responded by making sure that nominees are more well spread across the country.

Still, that doesn’t explain why longtime SF restaurateurs and chefs have been ignored in major categories as well, with categories like Best Chef: California, Outstanding Chef, and Outstanding Restaurateur generally featuring established names. (Despite San Francisco being the dominant food scene in the state, the only Best Chef: California winner from SF in the last seven years was Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s in 2022. And the last Outstanding Restaurant winner here was over a decade ago, the now closed Slanted Door, in 2014.)

Things appear to be turning around for SF this year at the James Beard Awards, just as they appear to be turning around for the city more broadly, at least via the 2026 list of semifinalists in the Chef & Restaurant Awards.

A whopping 21 chefs, restaurants, bars, and restaurateurs from the Bay Area figure among the semifinalists, including in the major categories like Best New Restaurant — where we see Hayes Valley’s Happy Crane among a total of 30 semifinalists.

In the Outstanding Restaurateur category we have two local pairs of names: Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski (who are previous Best Chef: West winners) for their Atomic Workshop restaurant group that includes State Bird Provisions, The Progress, and Anchovy Bar; and the pair behind Copra and Palo Alto’s Ettan, Ayesha Thapar and chef Srijith Gopinathan. (Brioza and Krasinski were also finalists in this category last year.)

Michael Tusk of Quince, also a previous Best Chef: West honoree, gets long-listed this year in the Outstanding Chef category. And Foreign Cinema lands a nod in the Outstanding Restaurant category — possibly for the first time, just on the heels of its 25th anniversary, though I need to confirm that.

SF was shut out of the Emerging Chef category, though Steve Joo of Oakland’s Joodooboo, who also got a Food & Wine Best New Chef honor last year, made the cut.

In the category called Best Chef: California, a Bay Area finalist or two should come off the long list this year, which includes Harrison Cheney of Sons & Daughters, Geoff Davis of Oakland’s Burdell, Sarah Cooper and Alan Hsu of Oakland’s Sun Moon Studio, Kim Alter of Nightbird, Brandon Rice of Ernest, Emma Lipp and Stephanie Reagor of Sonoma’s Valley Bar & Bottle, Kosuke Tada of Mijote, Fik and Rachel Saleh of Fikscue, and Zareen Khan of Zareen’s.

Kosuke Tada was a finalist in this category last year.

Tiki stalwart Smuggler’s Cove has once again been long-listed in the Outstanding Bar category, and sexy new Union Square spot Valley Club got a nod in the Best New Bar category — to which owner Mitch Lagneaux responded on Instagram saying, “This is such an honor to be on a list like this and to even be considered in the conversation.”

The iconic House of Prime Rib is a semifinalist in the Outstanding Hospitality category.

And in the category of Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker, Monique and Paul Feybesse of Oakland’s Tarts de Feybesse are nominated.

Also, Paul Einbund of SF’s The Morris and sommelier Derek Stevenson of Auro in Calistoga were both listed in the Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service category; and Kevin Diedrich of SF’s Pacific Cocktail Haven is a seminfalist in the category of Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service.

We should note that these “long-listed” honorees aren’t even, exactly, nominees yet — the short-listed finalists will be released in early April, ahead of the awards ceremony in Chicago in June. Nevertheless, if you ever watch Food Network competition shows, you know that most of those chefs still tout the fact that they were once a “James Beard semifinalist,” so it seems to count for something.