Inquirer restaurant critic Craig LaBan wins prestigious James Beard journalism award
The award recognizes “discerning criticism or commentary that contributes to the larger discourse on food, drink, and related topics.”
Craig LaBan, restaurant critic and columnist at The Inquirer, has won the James Beard Foundation’s Craig Claiborne Distinguished Criticism Award for his expert assessments of Philadelphia’s dining scene, from food carts to some of the city’s most exclusive reservations.
“This prestigious national award represents a significant achievement for Craig LaBan and cements his reputation as one of the finest food writers working today,” Gabriel Escobar, editor and senior vice president of The Philadelphia Inquirer, said in a statement Sunday.
LaBan was nominated for his reviews of Octopus Cart, a food cart at 20th and Market Streets that has been in business for more than 30 years; Loch Bar, a Broad Street seafood restaurant that opened in 2023 and has a $64 crabcake plate on the menu; and Honeysuckle Provisions’ dinner tasting menu in February 2024 that included “jellied kombucha cubes” that diners picked from a thorn branch.
This is LaBan’s second time winning a James Beard criticism award. His first was in 2000 in the Newspaper Restaurant Review or Critique category.
LaBan, who described his work as “the greatest job in the world,” was not at the awards ceremony in Chicago on Saturday. Instead, he watched the stream from Bolo in Center City and said it was a “surreal” experience to find out he won.
Twenty-five years after winning his first James Beard award for criticism, LaBan said Sunday it was gratifying to find out “that I can still do it. It’s a good feeling.”
The James Beard Foundation’s media award category includes entries in journalism, published books, and broadcast work. The other two nominees in LaBan’s category were Jenn Harris of the Los Angeles Times and Ted Genoways for reporting in the Food & Environment Reporting Network in collaboration with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Inverse.
The Claiborne award recognizes “discerning criticism or commentary that contributes to the larger discourse on food, drink, and related topics,” according to the James Beard Foundation website.
“I’m so thrilled to have won this award to represent Philadelphia and its dynamic restaurant scene, and to also showcase all the good work our food team is still doing at The Inquirer,” said LaBan in a statement on Sunday. “What an amazing opportunity I’ve had to chronicle this city’s growth over the past quarter century through the lens of food — and it is more thrilling than ever to eat here and write about it.”
LaBan has been nominated for a James Beard award seven times, and also won in the Dining and Travel category in 2024 with Inquirer photographer Jessica Griffin for coverage out of Mexico.
When LaBan first started in his position in 1998, restaurateur Stephen Starr was opening Buddakan, gastropubs were starting up, and it was the year that BYOBs “really became a major factor.” Since then, he said, Philadelphia has evolved into “a great neighborhood dining scene,” and an appealing place where young talent can get “a foothold” in ways that would not be possible in New York, Boston, or Washington.
He also cited immigrants’ contributions to the dining scene in Philadelphia.
“We’ve had some tremendous influxes of immigrant communities who’ve dramatically changed and improved and influenced our dining scene,” he said.
Readers were among those LaBan thanked Sunday.
“I feel like we have a very special relationship that only a critic at a local, independent newspaper can have,” he said.