Good morning. I am alive. I have returned to my life. It was a journey of joy and catharsis, heartbreak and pain. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. It was a lot. I was overwhelmed. But it was worth it.
Why did I go to the 2024 James Beard awards you ask, and rightfully so. I am not exactly a foodie, though that is an unfair characterization. I love, admire, respect and understand good food. I just don’t really need it, and I hold grave misgivings about the American restaurant industry, which seems… insane? Insane! I have a hard time with it.
But I am a sucker for America’s top chefs to turn their charm to 11 and serve me small sampler plates of their food. Or to serve me personally and alone in a yurt like they used to do at Summit. I am a simple man, but I can be swayed.
Anyway, I went to the 2024 James Beard Awards at the invitation of a very good old friend of mine, whose restaurant was nominated as a finalist in the Outstanding Restaurant category. Not one of the regional ones, mind you, the big one, the second-to-last award of the night of the three-hour affair. I did not really understand this distinction at first, when this happened. But yeah. Big deal. The place is five years old. She is the investor, GM and pastry chef, and her friend Mark is her partner and the chef and Mark’s wife is their third partner and co-GM? Something like that.
The restaurant is called Convenience West, it is about six years old, it is in Marfa, TX. Here is an early rave review. Here is a more recent one. People freakin’ love this place.
And I? I have never been. I was about to go, when it opened, but the existence of Mark, Kaki and Katherine’s restaurant out in west Texas exactly coincides with the existence of my daughter, and the intense bout that is the first five years of parenting, and I couldn’t get away from my family, and it was too far to drag a baby solo, and so I decided to wait until Jane was old enough to come or be left alone.
But I have eaten Mark’s food, oh have I, having first met him, mmm, gonna say eight, nine years ago, when Katherine and our good friend Flood ran an events business and would do hospitality houses at SXSW where Mark would cook and oh, mmm, delicious. These SXSW houses ran for… three? four years? And I would act as an unofficial gopher for them, because, well, they are some of my best friends.
So when Katherine asked her posse to come to Chicago for moral support, I was there.
I guess it makes sense in hindsight, but I had no idea how big this whole event was. To be clear, I knew the James Beard awards were a big deal — my friend and ex coworker Sam Fore had been nominated in the Best Chef Southeast category a few years earlier, but that whole thing got a little weird. But I knew enough to know of the prestige of the awards. But not the scale. Not the scale.
The thing is basically a three-day event kinda like SXSW, tons of side parties and activations and pop-ups. And on Sunday night, we availed ourselves of these, and boy, everyone wants the entire entourage from a top-three category nominee at their party. I thought our posse was.. between nine and twelve deep depending on whether Gary was with us, or our friends who were in town for an Onion meeting were with us.
But it was fine! Come on in! Try this spring roll. Try this pad thai. Just amazing. Everything is delicious! Everyone is amazingly kind! You know how everyone at an Apple Keynote (we’ll get to that later) talks and stands in the same super-human way? There is a similar restaurant-host version, exuding kindness and care. It really is something.
Let me see if I can sum up Sunday: twelve of us at a famed local hot dog place. This was of excitement to me because I learned as I flew into Chicago that my great grandfather’s Chicago restaurant empire lingered into the 21st century with… his son? His grandson? Unclear. But Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs and Country Style Restaurant, I learned, lasted until at least 2000. Fascinating. I think that would be Pete the IIIrd, my second cousin. But maybe it’s my great uncle. Unclear. Lost touch with that branch of the family when my grandmother died. Anyway, ridiculous hot dogs at a glorious tourist type place I forgot the name of. '
Then to Mom’s Tavern because I vowed my first drink in Chicago would be Malort. Malort is the Chicago locals booze. Fernet plus Absinthe plus regret in a single shot. My kind of drink. I had met Doug at the airport, his flight came in 90 minutes after mine. I spent those 90 minutes looking for a Malort shot at the airport. Seems a crime that there is no Malort at O’Hare someone should rectify this. Mom’s tavern was friendly and fun and empty and great and they put a Convenience West sticker on the elevator and gave Katherine a Mom’s Tavern sticker that I am very jealous of. They had a Malort lunchbox and put a photo of “it puts the lotion in the basket” guy from Silence of the Lambs on the ceiling so you could look up and, I guess, feel like a kidnap victim. Experiences!
Then to the Open Table party in honor of Ruth Reichel who gladly let 10 of us in. We had our friend Gary He with us too. Gary is a 3-time Beard nominee/1 time winner in the journalism category. He is making a photo book about McDonald’s worldwide. It is amazing. I will tell you about this at a later date. He is deep in the food industry. He was in his element, like I would be at a tech party in Austin in 2008 or something. It was a thing of beauty to watch him work a room.
As an aside, I just went to Gary’s site for a link and look at this photo, fantastic.
I met exactly one person at this party, because of my Yo La Tengo shirt, but he turned out to be one of the owners of the place we were at, Bar Avec, and twelve other restaurants and bars, with some friends of his. We had a great talk. And of course I introduced him to Katherine, so, you know, I don’t know, if Convenience West turns out to franchise in the midwest, you can blame me.
Ruth Reichel was apparently there but the place was packed and I did not see her. They had a good non-alcoholic drink, though, of which I availed myself for a while, but then switched back to the hard stuff. Whoops.
Then to the AAPI party, which Gary took us to, because he worked with one of the restaurants there and oh my god that party ruled. Delicious spring rolls from Saigon Social, amazing pad thai from… somewhere. Bottomless free Johnny Walker Black and sochu cocktails and uh… that was a lot.
Then Gary realized we were close to the Global McDonald’s and it was still open, so we went and had spicy Mexican Fries from Finland, a dark meat dry spicy chicken sandwich from China, I think, and a spicy burger? My god, those fries. They came with a bag and some spice and you dropped the spice in the bag and shook em up yourself. Just the best. That place was amazing. Gary, working on a book about global McDonald’s and all, asked so many questions that eventually the manager came out and showed him the assembly instructions. Really that place was great.
Wait did we go to Gaijin before or after this I can’t remember? Gaijin. Okonomiyaki and Kakigori in the West Loop by chef Paul Virant. It was free, delicious, lots of swag, I bought two shirts and tipped overly generously and my god that place might have been the highlight of the whole thing. Gaijin. Love it. Want to go back.
Then back to Mom’s Place and the group slowly began to disburse but Flood and I, being Flood and I, went to another bar after that and shut it down and my god a day of good food and friends what a great day.
And what a price to pay the next day, where my hangover was immediately at existential levels. Late breakfast with Flood and Doug and that place had this amazing chicken soup which helped a lot and I had two cups of. Flood had a ticket to the actual show, so she went and met Katherine to prep.
Doug and I made a plan, went and napped for two more hours, then met up to pub crawl around the area near the awards show for three hours while they went to the show. We decided to do this with non-alcoholic beer. And we did! And it was great! Chicago is filled with giant after-work bars that are now empty after work on Monday evenings because I guess no one goes to all of those giant office buildings anymore.
Eventually we ended up at a restaurant Gary recommended, Kindling. It was yummy. We sat at the bar and loaded up the Beard awards on my phone and watched them while eating and drinking. There had been much discussion about whether to get tickets to the actual show or not. Back when we were invited, I assumed I’d get a ticket, but as I was buying it, I realized the basic setup of this awards show, and it is insane: You cannot sit with your friends. It is three hours long, and there is no food, at least not for the plebes or the nominees. Meanwhile, up in the balcony, like the fucking Hunger Games or something, the sponsors get dinner? Insane. Flood gave her ticket that was seated next to the CW crew so Mark’s mom could sit with them. She sat alone in the back and read a book. Gary left halfway through and joined us at Kindling. He brought us wristbands for the after party. Doug and I were dressed as pit masters and had our Convenience West hats on, to, you know, lend an air of credibility to the thing.
And then, after three hours, they got to the second-to-last category, their category, Outstanding Restaurant.
They did not win. Langbaan in Portland did, which, hey, probably the only other restaurant across all the categories that I’d ever been to, so I can say they did deserve it. That place is delicious.
Katherine had been saying all week that they’d already won, that to make finalist in that category was as good as a win. I believe that. But it’s still sad.
So after their category, Gary, Doug and I went to the afterparty. The afterparty was absolutely great right up until people arrived there. We got there early since there was still one award remaining when we headed over. So we basically had the place to ourselves at first and it was amazing: free drinks from like 20 brands, and like 50 of America’s best restaurants giving you free food. Just fantastic.
But then the people started to arrive and it became chaos and hell and I think if the room, the scale of the event, were… 3x the size? For the same number of guests? It could have maintained that early promise. But as it happened, in the end it was packed, and rabid people in ballgowns and tuxedos were all fighting for free room temperature seafood and it really took on a pretty desperate and insane vibe. Escape escape.
(And my god, these people were dressed to the nines. Everyone. Doug and I were far and away the least well-dressed people there. Gary was in a tux! Most dudes were!)
And the whole thing was perfectly timed so that if you attended both the awards and the after party, it was too late to procure a dinner in this particular part of Chicago. So after some sad wandering around and a few failures, we ended up at the bar of a pizza shop. Me, Flood, Doug, Katherine and her boyfriend Nick. And you know what? It was actually a lovely end to the evening. Some non-chaotic talks with friends in a quiet bar. Couldn’t ask for anything more.
And I successfully drank not a single drop of booze that night. Thank you to Ritual and French Bloom for their non-alcoholic options at the after party. Look how easily spon-con works on me. I would be a terrible food writer.
Anyway, friends are great, food is great, corporate sponsorships are not but I will take your free stuff. Excellent times.
I was going to write about Apple today, too. I am all caught up now. Read a bunch of articles and Apple blog posts at the airport and on the plane, and Jane wanted a mommy bedtime because it was late and she wanted a full one from me tonight so I had time to watch the keynote. But we will get to that tomorrow. I am hungry. This is my first summer, post-school Jane morning. She came down to meet me while I was writing this and neither one of us have had breakfast yet. Which was very polite. But now I am starving. And I have missed my daughter. So let’s go have pancakes!
Today’s Media of the Day is the great new album by The Pull of Autumn, a New England goth band with roots in the 90’s and a band I loved called Johanna’s House of Glamour and they have a new album and I love it and it has so many great New England musicians on it: Julius Manning, Brandy Marie Grahek, Sophia Campbell, Dan Lax, Erik McFaddin, Kevin Carnes, Russ Artega, Paul Everett, Kraig Jordan, Jodie Treloar, Kevin Zahm, Bob Kendall, Scott Janovits, Bruce MacLeod, Daniel Darrow, Philip Parfitt, Luke Skyscraper James, Matthew Darrow, Leigh Gregory, Ricky Humprey, Aaron Kerr, Dana Valais, Erik Person, Stephen Cavoreto. I wrote those out by hand.
All right! Breakfast! It is good to be back. Thank you for indulging me with my screenshot editions. Sorry the Monday one went out on Sunday. What can I say I don’t know how to use a computer.