Credit: Courtesy of Stissing House
Clare de Boer, the 34-year-old chef/proprietor of Stissing House, is one of 20 semifinalists for the 2024 James Beard Foundation Award as the best chef in New York state. This is the third time de Boer has been a semifinalist for a James Beard Award. In 2018, she was in contention in the category of Rising Star Chef and last year Stissing House was a semifinalist as Best New Restaurant in the United States.
“It’s very exciting to see the wonderful things going on with food in the Hudson Valley,” de Boer said. The Beard Award list “is a testament to the great food activity happening here. It’s exciting to see so much opening up in the area.”
De Boer gave credit to her colleagues at Stissing House: “The nomination doesn’t change anything we do. It’s a great team and we will just continue to do what we do.”
The James Beard Awards were first presented in 1990. A nonprofit organization the James Beard Foundation state that its mission is “to celebrate, support, and elevate the people behind America’s food culture and champion a standard of good food anchored in talent, equity, and sustainability.” Their awards celebrate creativity in the America culinary culture both in restaurants and in food writing.
Courtesy of Stissing House
Through cooking, lecturing, teaching and writing, James Beard (1903-1985) came to symbolize American cuisine. The author of over 20 books, he participated in the very first television show devoted to cooking, on NBC in 1946, and influenced generations of chefs here and abroad.
Fifteen of the state’s chefs on the semifinal list are based in the New York City metro area. The other five are all in the mid-Hudson region. Besides de Boer, the semifinalist chefs in our region are:
Doris Choi at Good Night, a Southeast Asian restaurant in Woodstock
Chris Mauricio at Harana Market, featuring Filipino food in Accord
Shaina Loew-Banayan at Cafe Mutton, a wide-ranging neighborhood eatery in Hudson
Efrén Hernández at Casa Susanna, eclectic Mexican food in Leeds