Photo by Melanie Dunea

Tribeca restaurants ruled the top two categories of the 2025 James Beard awards, winning for outstanding restaurateur — going to Tribecan Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr of Frenchette — and outstanding chef — Jungsik Yim of Jungsik. (The best chef for New York State went to Vijay Kumar of Semma, the Southern Indian restaurant in the Village.)

Frenchette opened in 2018 as the first restaurant for the pair, who had cooked together for a couple decades at Keith McNally’s restaurants. They now have Le Veau d’ Or, which they reopened on the Upper East Side last summer (it was established in 1937), and Le Rock, a new restaurant at Rockefeller Center opened in 2022. And of course we must include Frenchette Bakery. The team took Arcade Bakery over in late 2020; the space had been empty since Roger Gural retired in July 2019.

Jungsik Yim (when the restaurant opened it was called Jung Sik but a few months later had been converted to Jungsik) took over the former Chanterelle space on Harrison in 2011 for his eponymous restaurant, which the Times called “the first high-end, thoroughly modern Korean restaurant in New York.” Since then, he has garnered tons of awards and three stars from Michelin. He also has Jungsik in Seoul, which he opened in 2009.