Who will win a 2025 James Beard Award? A rundown of Philly’s restaurant nominees.

A year after being shut out at the James Beard Awards, Philadelphia’s chef and restaurant finalists hope to capture glory tonight at the 2025 ceremony in Chicago.

Four Philadelphians are finalists in three categories: Mawn’s Phila Lorn (Emerging Chef); Royal Sushi & Izakaya’s Jesse Ito and Her Place Supper Club’s Amanda Shulman (both for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic); and the Lovers Bar at Friday Saturday Sunday (Outstanding Bar).

Philadelphia shined at Saturday night’s James Beard Media Awards as Inquirer critic Craig LaBan won the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Criticism Award for a submission of three reviews: Honeysuckle Provisions (the earlier restaurant from Omar Tate and Cybille St.Aude-Tate), Octopus Cart (a quirky Center City food cart), and Loch Bar (a seafood restaurant in Center City). Last year, LaBan — who also won the award in 2000 — and Inquirer photographer Jessica Griffin won in the Dining & Travel category for articles following chef Dionicio Jimenez and restaurateur-spirits mogul David Suro to their hometowns in Mexico, as well as a round-up of LaBan’s favorite dishes from the trip.

Also last year, Chinatown mainstay Vietnam Restaurant was honored as one of Beard’s America’s Classics restaurants. It was praised for serving quality food, reflecting the character of their communities, and having timeless appeal.

Here are the Philadelphia chef and restaurant finalists for 2025:

» READ MORE: Who has a chance at a James Beard Award

Perhaps it seems odd that at age 39, and running what has been one of Philly’s most-sought-after restaurants for more than two years — following stints at Zama, coZara, Will, and Mighty Bread Co. — a chef could be considered to be “emerging.” But people have spoken — raves from The Inquirer’s Craig LaBan and the New York Times — drawn by Phila Lorn’s bold, Cambodian-meets-Philly cooking and wife Rachel’s polished hospitality. The 1,300 dinner reservations are snapped up the moment they’re released each month. (Walk-ins can still join the ever-growing line at lunch Thursday through Saturday.) The Lorns are looking for a late-July opening of their next restaurant, a Southeast Asian-inspired oyster bar called Sao, a riff on his immigrant parents’ pronunciation of “South” as in “South Philly,” at 1710 E. Passyunk Ave. (P.S. Say his first name “PEE-la.” His parents named him after their adopted city.)

Jesse Ito, the chef-partner at Royal, is hoping to take home a Beard on his eighth nomination. Ito, 36, grew up in the business, starting as a teen dishwasher at Fuji, the destination restaurant in South Jersey then owned by his father, Matt. By 19, he was head sushi chef. Father and son, with business partners Stephen Simons and David Frank, opened Royal in Queen Village in 2016; the next year, Ito began a four-year run as a finalist for Rising Star Chef of the Year, followed by four years as a Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic finalist. Ito’s omakases are the city’s gold standard, as he sources carefully and treats everything with panache and technique. Reservations at his eight-seat counter are nigh impossible to acquire. This summer, Ito and Royal chef Justin Bacharach, with Simons and Frank, will open Dancerobot, an izakaya, at 1710 Sansom St.

Connecticut-born Amanda Shulman, now 32, enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to study journalism and political science. She found her career in her campus apartment, where she hosted dinner parties. A meal at Vetri Cucina inspired her to write a profile of Vetri. While interviewing his father, Sal, she stuck around to make staff meal with him. That led to full-time work, first at Vetri’s former Amis Trattoria and later at his Las Vegas restaurant, where she was executive sous chef. A couple of stops later, with her boyfriend and now husband, Alex Kemp, in tow, she opened Her Place in 2021. She serves a fixed-price menu — capped by a take-away gift of memorable chocolate-chip cookies — in a charming storefront walk-up just off of 18th and Sansom Streets. In 2023, the couple opened My Loup, a bistro, nearby. Shulman was a finalist for Emerging Chef in 2022 and 2023.

When Friday Saturday Sunday won the Beard for Outstanding Restaurant in 2023, owners Chad and Hanna Williams were quick to credit head bartender Paul MacDonald for the restaurant’s overall success.

“When people think of Friday Saturday Sunday, they think of Paul at the bar,” Chad Williams, told The Inquirer two years ago.

And now its Lovers Bar, rebranded as a separate entity, is a Beard finalist. The 13 seats on the first floor fill up fast and stay full all night. It’s the only part of the restaurant serving an à la carte menu.

MacDonald, 37, is somewhat of an iconoclast. He’s told The Inquirer that his ideal cocktail list would have just eight drinks — enough to touch on every flavor profile, without redundancies. (He prefers to talk to customers to suss out their tastes.)

He’s also arguably the first bartender to apply the Fibonacci sequence — a 13th-century mathematical formula — to cocktail-making. In the Fibonacci sequence, each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, beginning with 0 and 1, then another 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. Many cocktails follow a 2:1:1 ratio — two parts liquor, one part sour, one part sweet. While developing a drink with five fortified wines eight years ago, MacDonald realized that his recipe ratio — ¼ ounce, ¼ ounce, ½ ounce, ¾ ounce, 1¼ ounce — aligned with the Fibonacci sequence (1:1:2:3:5). Subsequent cocktails relying on the ratio have worked out.

We’ll see if the math is mathing for the Beard judges.

Monday’s ceremony will be livestreamed on Eater starting at 6:30 p.m. Eastern.