A 3.7 Yelp-Rated Michigan Sushi Joint Won A James Beard Award. Should It Have?

Nobu Matsuhisa and Masa Takayama have never won a “best chef” award from the James Beard organization. 

That’s right, two of the most influential names in American sushi have a goose egg when it comes to garnering the prestigious culinary award. Nobu’s restaurant did win a James Beard in 1995. Takayama has three Michelin stars, but isn’t good enough for a Beard.

This is important, because I’m trying to understand and put in context how a chef named Hajime Sato who runs a strip mall sushi joint in Clawson, Michigan, called Sozai, ended up winning a James Beard Award for “Best Chef Great Lakes”, when it’s arguably not even the best sushi spot in the Great Lakes region and certainly not America.

Full disclosure, I haven’t eaten there. So it’s fair to say right now STFU Mike, you have no right to talk about this. But, now that we have that established, you should know there’s a good chance that members of the Beard committee that determine nominees and ultimately the winners haven’t either.

The James Beard awards nominating committees are regional. So in the Midwest, you might have selectors from Chicago, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.  Do these people eat at every single restaurant in the Midwest? No. Do they even eat in more than a couple towns where nominated chefs might occur? Not likely.

I’ve heard from people I know who served on this committee over the years that Beard stipends for voter expenses are meager and do not scratch the surface of what is required.

In other words, if you want to do this voting process right and truly evaluate all the contenders, you would have to do your research mostly on your own dime.

Some might argue that this lack of funding makes sense given that the Beard is a 501(c)(3), aka IRS-recognized tax-exempt non-profit.

The Beard isn’t exactly a mom and pop. According to its most recent publicly available audited financial statement (March 2023), it was sitting on $4.6 million in assets after its liabilities were accounted for.

Its executives were compensated with 2 million dollars (11.2% of all total expenses) (according to Propublica) including CEO Claire Reichenbach’s salary of $402,788.

Two other interesting financial facts about the Beards are that the awards themselves generate $3.1 million dollars for the organization, and that during the pandemic the foundation received almost $1.6 million dollars in forgiven PPP loans.

I recognize people have to eat, but that last fact bothers me. People were dying on the streets during the pandemic and there is no credible argument, even from a food-obsessed human like me, that the James Beard house was essential during COVID, and that it should cost taxpayers over a million dollars, when as an organization it doesn’t even pay taxes.

The Beard foundation also gets millions of dollars of regular and in-kind contributions. Because all awards are political, one of the surest ways to promote a nod, is to travel to New York and cook at the Beard house with free labor for donors and members. 

I’m not gonna examine every line item of expense for the foundation, but the point is in 2023, the Beard foundation had over $18 million dollars of revenue. It’s first priority should be properly funding every judge to evaluate the awards on an even playing field.  It should not be pool-side visits to the Caribbean like this one, even if the noble outcome is to promote native Grenadian cuisine.

I have lived my life (in terms of total years) equally between Michigan and Chicago. My family still lives northeast of Detroit and I visit often. What I fundamentally believe as a person with divided loyalties is that on balance, Chicago has a better restaurant industry and a whole lot more cooking talent than Detroit.

It’s like the Sinatra song, but not in New York. If you can make it in Chicago, you can make it anywhere. That’s not to say Indianapolis doesn’t have Milktooth which is one of the best brunch restaurants anywhere in America. That’s not to say Warda Patisserie or Flowers of Vietnam in Detroit aren’t some of the most exciting and accomplished restaurants in America.

Michigan has approximately 10,000 restaurants and Illinois has over 25,000, a significant percentage of those in Chicago. It’s sort of an impossible task to figure out the exact numbers, but my hunch is that when you break it down by truly Beard-worthy restaurants the percentages are even more skewed toward Illinois.  

Population and fierce competition alone create a pressure cooker that means you have to be the best of the best in Chicago to survive.  Again, I’m from Michigan. I’m a native. I have pride in my state, and I wish this wasn’t true, but the evidence of this higher quality and abundance of options is why I live in Chicago and write about food here now.

Sozai represents one of the only omakase sushi experiences in the state of Michigan, and frankly it still serves a la carte maki (no California rolls tho!) too, probably because the market doesn’t support omakase only. I can think of at least ten omakase places off the top of my head in Chicago alone.

If we compare some of those spots to Sozai, they have significantly higher Yelp ratings, arguably higher levels of hospitality (read Sozai’s 1 star Yelp reviews, they’re wild, but also consistent that chef Sato’s admirable principles rankle the Michigan masses), similar commitments to using sustainably acquired fish, and better interior builds.

So how did Sozai get nominated? If a voter can’t get to every restaurant, what is the nominating process like? It generally becomes a breakdown of regional factions. In the Great Lakes, this means Chicago voters vs the rest of the Midwest. 

While some judges are likely to cross over in their votes, most have a familiarity with THEIR region, ultimately becoming a cheerleader for it, especially if they haven’t been able to get to every jurisdiction to evaluate talent.

Given that three other regions’ voters are likely to outweigh the Chicago contingent, they also have the opportunity to create a bloc or gang up against Chicago for their own agenda.  Which means despite the lower number of truly Beard-eligible restaurants in these states, you end up getting a higher proportion of nominees not from Chicago.

So what?

Well, it means that a lot of folks who deserve to be nominated don’t get nominated.  It means that folks who do get nominated maybe should not have.  It means that folks who are finalists who probably should win, don’t.

This means that some restaurants won’t get the bump in business they deserve. It means some cooks will feel defeated, maybe even give up on their dreams. It means that some cooks never will go to the next level.

For example this year, one of the Great Lakes Beard finalists up against Sozai was Esmé. Esmé is one of the most extraordinary restaurants anywhere, not just Chicago. There is nothing like it at all in Michigan. It is co-owned by Jenner Tomaska and his wife Katrina Bravo. It is an absolute art project in every way.

Tomaska commissioned his friend and his friend’s dad to build a machine to extrude giant Cheetos for an appetizer course.

One of the meritorious attributes of Sozai is that chef Sato fires some of his own plates for the restaurant. Tomaska and his team serve their food on serveware made by a selection of local artisans. They create sculptures in house every single night, like this clay rooster which gets broken by diners during service.

They create choose-your-own-adventure type presentations which allow diners to construct their own plates.  They create paintable canvases for interactive courses. Billie Eilish came by and painted one of these! By all accounts Esmé beats Sozai on this point in every way.

Maybe Sato’s food is better or more skillful?  Maybe. Esmé has a Michelin star, Sozai does not. Esmé’s cooks are hand carving marigolds out of steamed scallops, arguably a more artistic and time-consuming interpretation of seafood than traditional sushi.

jennertomaska

A post shared by @jennertomaska

It’s very clear that the James Beard Awards, which now go to a significant number of women, LGBTQIA, and BIPOC folk, are also using the awards as a means to correct the lack of representation in society.  They’ve stated this goal. You can see it in the award outcomes. 20 years ago, the Beards were the domain of the straight white European male. Only a few won this year.

This is fine, great even. Awards are not only about skill or accomplishment, but are meant to inspire or reflect what we want in our culture. But again, if we examine this point, Esmé is co-owned by Katrina Bravo, a Latina.

The restaurant has collaborated with a long list of BIPOC artists. And when I say collaborated, this isn’t just hanging their pieces on the walls for rich diners to consider buying. The walls at Esmé are painted with examples of their work. Installations are made on the plate. The cuisine is inspired by the artists’ style, and they are full-fledged team members. Arguably, Esmé has created opportunities and promoted those previously underrepresented more than any other restaurant in the category.

So, what? Esmé doesn’t win. Life’s not fair. Well, yes, but also it could mean less business for Esmé, which means you’re putting the restaurant with arguably even greater impact for all the things you’d like to promote at risk, or saying, listen it’s better to be a single small operator in an off market than it is to scale an ingenious team doing lots of great things as a world citizen while trying to further the possibilities of cuisine.

Consider the other Chicago entrant that lost “Best Chef Great Lakes”, Chef Sujan Sarkar of Indienne. Sarkar is inspiring a generation of diners to believe that Indian cuisine should not just be the domain of cheap fast buffets or take out butter chicken. He’s showing that the combination of regional dishes and spices may even be more valuable and exciting than anything Euro-centric. On this idea alone, Indienne might arguably be the biggest game changer.

I have no doubts Sato is an artist and a great human committed to serving sustainable fish courageously in a state that still doesn’t understand what he’s doing, and honestly, given a real penchant for fried perch, never may. I might argue that part of Sozai’s low Yelp rating is a form of retaliation by people who are unwilling to understand what Sato is trying to do. If a Beard award can combat that, there’s a lot of worth here.

Frankly, I don’t want to be making these comparisons at all. That I have to is a symbol of a broken process. Chicago is too populous. It should be its own region like New York and California. That it is not feels like a reflection of the Beard house’s New York roots. Even though at times, we’ve been the best culinary city in America (say 2005-2010), we continue to be treated as third coast flyover meat and potato-scarfing rubes.

I’m sure there’s a slippery slope argument that says if we give Chicago or Illinois a devoted voting category, every state will want their own region and that’s unsustainable in terms of cost. I hear that, but I think the population and restaurant density characteristics of Chicago make it an outlier. You might make a similar argument for New Orleans. But, there are few others. This will not create a major issue.

Also, given that Chicago has been a real partner offering supporting funding and incentives, hosting the awards ceremony since 2015 and at least through 2027, the city has made a remarkable contribution to the Beard awards that deserves a little quid pro quo in terms of its own voting category.

If the Beard foundation doesn’t want to do this, they should consider awarding Chicago/Illinois panel voters a proportion of voting seats relative to their restaurant density and increase funding so that all of the voting members from the region are required to eat at all of the semifinal-nominated places at a minimum.

If I know each voter ate at Sozai and Esmé and Indienne and decided on those terms that Sozai deserved the award, then the Beard Foundation will truly be the credible ‘Culinary Oscars’ it claims to be.