Street to Kitchen chef in Houston wins city’s first James Beard Award for Best Chef in Texas

Matthew Odam, Austin American-Statesman
·2 min read
The James Beard Awards were handed out in Chicago Monday.
The James Beard Awards were handed out in Chicago Monday.

The culinary scene in Houston is undoubtedly beaming with pride today, as one of its own took home the James Beard Foundation award Monday night for Best Chef: Texas.

Chef Benchawan Jabthong Painter of Street to Kitchen, known to many in Houston as “chef G”, won the award in a category that featured no Central Texas chefs.

Chef G beat the odds in Houston with her Thai restaurant that she opened with her husband, Graham Painter, early in the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’d wonder if they’d do enough takeaway business to last through the worst of the pandemic. I’d hope for the best,” Houston Chronicle restaurant critic Alison Cook wrote in 2022 when she visited the East End restaurant for the first time after many pandemic takeout pickups.

See winners list: James Beard Awards make history with first Indigenous woman winner

Chef G is the second Texas chef to earn the award designated solely for Lone Star chefs. Austin's El Naranjo chef-owner Iliana de la Vega won the inaugural Beard award for best chef in Texas in 2022. The Lone Star State was granted its own category in 2019, and semifinalists for the category were named in 2020. But the new award was not handed out in 2020 or 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic and some shuffling of priorities at the Beard Foundation.

Austin chefs Damien Brockway of barbecue trailer Distant Relatives, which focuses on African-American foodways, Kareem El-Ghayesh of KG BBQ, and Tavel Bristol-Joseph of Canje had all been named semifinalists earlier in the year.

The awards were handed out in Chicago Monday following another round of controversy surrounding the JBF. The NYT reported last week that the Foundation had surreptitiously eliminated a chef from contention following a private investigation for ethics violations. The story highlighted the Foundation’s furtive approach to investigation and their lack of transparency in their findings.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Houston Thai Chef Benchawan Jabthong Painter wins James Beard Award