Bristol Chef Named James Beard Award Semifinalist
Thursday, February 19, 2015
GoLocalProv Food Team
Chef Champe Speidel, co-owner of the Bristol restaurant
Persimmon has been
named a semifinalist for the prestigious James Beard Award for "Best Chef - Northeast." The Awards were established in 1990 and have been referred to as "The Oscars of Food."
The semifinalists are chosen from a list of 35,000 submissions by the James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards Committee, made up of critics, writers, and editors. The semifinalists will then be further culled by a group of former Beard Award winners, Restaurant and Chef Award Committee members, and other regional panelists. After these judges cast their votes, the five semifinalists with the highest number of votes in each category become the Finalists.
Speidel has been previously been nominated as a Beard Award semifinalist 3 times, and is a graduate of Johnson and Wales University in Providence.
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