New Orleans Wins Big at the 2024 James Beard Awards

It was a huge night for New Orleans at the 2024 James Beard Foundation Awards, announced at a ceremony in Chicago on the evening of Monday, June 10. Dakar NOLA, chef Serigne Mbaye and Effie Richardson’s widely-acclaimed Senegalese tasting menu restaurant and Eater New Orleans’s 2023 restaurant of the year won Best New Restaurant, while Jewel of the South, Chris Hannah’s refined French Quarter cocktail bar, took home the 2024 award for Outstanding Bar.

The last few years have brought major accolades for Dakar NOLA. Mbaye first began hosting dinners around town in 2020, at Margaret Place, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum (SoFab), and Mosquito Supper Club. Eater New Orleans named Mbaye 2021 chef of the year; the following year he was a 2022 James Beard Award finalist for Emerging Chef. In November 2022, he and Richardson opened their permanent tasting menu restaurant at 3814 Magazine Street. Mbaye was again nominated in the Emerging Chef category in 2023, and Dakar NOLA went on to be named one of Eater’s 2023 Best New Restaurants in America.

Josh Brasted/Eater

Mbaye is Senegalese American, born in Harlem and raised partly in Senegal. He learned a love of cooking from his mother, who owned a Senegalese restaurant in New York. He cooked in kitchens including two- and three-star Michelin restaurants L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in New York and Atelier Crenn in San Francisco before landing at Commander’s Palace in 2016. Following his stint at Commander’s, Mbaye set out to find his culinary voice with a return to Senegal; experiences that helped shape the initial Dakar NOLA dinners. “What I saw in Dakar really inspired me to focus on the spices of my cooking,” he told Eater in 2021.

“Our food is at the root of what is often considered the best food of North America, Creole and Cajun food,” said Mbaye while accepting the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant on Monday night. “Our food doesn’t have to be filtered through Creole food to taste good.”

“Dakar is a space of love, joy, and hope,” said Richardson on Monday.

Denny Culbert/Jewel of the South

Jewel of the South opened at 1026 St. Louis Street in 2019. This year was the bar’s first time nominated in the James Beard Awards; Hannah’s name was synonymous with Arnaud’s French 75 bar for 14 years, culminating in a James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar Program in 2017. The cocktail den with a fine-dining menu from Philip Whitmarsh on the quieter outskirts of the Quarter pays homage to the original bar of the same name — a bar that was supposedly the birthplace of the brandy crusta, a version of which Jewel has become known for since opening. It was named U.S. Restaurant Bar of the Year at Tales of the Cocktail in 2022 (and Hannah was named U.S. Bartender of the Year).

See the full list of 2024 James Beard Award winners.

Josh Brasted/Eater

Watch the 2024 James Beard Awards Restaurant and Chef Awards ceremony here:

Disclosure: Some Vox Media staff members are part of the voting body for the James Beard Awards. Eater is partnering with the James Beard Foundation to livestream the awards in 2024. All editorial content is produced independently of the James Beard Foundation.