{"id":339498,"date":"2026-06-17T06:32:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T06:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/339498\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T06:32:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T06:32:28","slug":"three-houston-chefs-recognized-at-2026-james-beard-awards-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/339498\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Houston chefs recognized at 2026 James Beard Awards \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Adrian<\/a><\/p>\n

Maximo<\/p>\n

Maximo\u2019s Adrian Torres was named Best Emerging Chef at the 2026 James Beard Awards.<\/p>\n

Three chefs from the Houston area were honored Monday night as James Beard Award winners, with a local chef winning a national category for only the second time.<\/p>\n

Adrian Torres of Maximo, a Mexican restaurant in West University Place, was named Best Emerging Chef. Torres is a DACA recipient, according to the Maximo website<\/a>, and he spoke about his Mexican heritage during his acceptance speech in Chicago.<\/p>\n

“I am proud to be an immigrant,” he said.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

Houston’s only other winner in a national James Beard Award category was in 2022, when owner Alba Huerta and Julep prevailed in Outstanding Bar Program.<\/p>\n

The awards<\/a> are considered one of the highest honors in the culinary industry. And this year, two other Houston chefs were recognized in a regional category as Evelyn Garcia and Henry Lu of J\u016aN won Best Chef in Texas.<\/p>\n

Houston-area chefs have now claimed the Texas award in three of the last four years. The 2025 honor went to Thomas Bille<\/a> of Belly of the Beast in Spring, while Benchawan Jabthong Painter<\/a> of Thai restaurant Street to Kitchen won the award in 2023. <\/p>\n

Ope Amosu of ChopnBlock also was a finalist this year for Best Chef in Texas. Houston’s other finalists<\/a> were the H-Town Restaurant Group’s Hugo Ortega and Tracy Vaught, who were up for Outstanding Restaurateur; Agnes and Sherman in the Best New Restaurant category; and June Rodil of March in the category for Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service.<\/p>\n

Chris Shepherd\u2019s Houston-based Southern Smoke Foundation<\/a> was one of five recipients of this year\u2019s Impact Awards, which were created last year. Since 2017, the foundation has donated more than $16 million in emergency relief funding to food-and-beverage workers across the United States while also providing more than 10,000 workers with access to mental health services, according to the James Beard Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maximo Maximo\u2019s Adrian Torres was named Best Emerging Chef at the 2026 James Beard Awards. Three chefs from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1174,49,56,77893,58,120989,4978,57,14118,32910,56582,66,223,27],"class_list":["post-339498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-arts-culture","tag-food","tag-houston","tag-houston-chefs","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-james-beard-award-winners","tag-houston-matters","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-restaurants","tag-james-beard-award","tag-james-beard-awards","tag-local","tag-news","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}