James Beard Winners ... so far

The James Beard Foundation presented cookbook awards last night, with Rick Stein's Complete Seafood as cookbook of the year. Joanne Weir's Weir Cooking in the City won in the "general" cookbook category besting Jamie Oliver's Dinners. For the Professional Category, the winner was John Ash Cooking One on One: Private Lessons in Simple, Contemporary Food from a Master Teacher winning over Keller's Bouchon and Nigella Lawson's Feast. In Health, the winner was The New Mayo Clinic Cookbook.

Bouchon did win in the Photography category and Harold McGee collected best reference honors with On Food and Cooking. For wine and spirits, the winner was Charles MacLean's Scotch Whisky (with the award collected by who appears to be a rather unethusiastic junior editor.) Best Food Writing was Gina Mallet's Last Chance to Eat.

Also recently presented were the James Beard Restaurant and Chef awards. No real surprises as Mario Batalli was chef of the year. Best Chef Midwest was Tony Mantuano, Spiaggia, Chicago. The Illy Best New Restaurant award went to Per Se (no surprise there), while the S. Pellegrino Outstanding Restaurant award went to Galatoire's in New Orleans. Outstanding service was Spago. Outstanding wine was Veritas. Danny Meyer was outstanding restauranteur.

The whole list including all the food writing awards.

One last note: Last month, the other major cookbook awards were named by the IACP, with Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food: An Opinionated History and More Than 100 Legendary Recipes taking cookbook of the year honors.