Spoon and Stable, Bar Brava, and Kado no Mise were named 2025 James Beard Award semifinalists Wednesday in separate categories.

Spoon and Stable is on the long list for Outstanding Restaurant, Bar Brava for Outstanding Wine Program, and Shigeyuki Furukawa of Kado no Mise for Best Chef: Midwest.

Spoon and Stable, chef Gavin Kaysen’s first restaurant, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary in the North Loop. It was a finalist for Best New Restaurant in 2015 but ultimately didn’t take home the hardware, though Kaysen was awarded Best Chef: Midwest for his work at Spoon and Stable in 2018.

Bar Brava is a natural wine bar with rotating pop-ups in its scratch kitchen, currently occupied by Torsk, on Washington Avenue just outside of the North Loop. This is its first nod from the James Beard Foundation. 

Shigeyuki Furukawa launched Kado no Mise, a Japanese restaurant in the North Loop, in 2017. Neither the chef nor the restaurant have been nominated for a James Beard Award before.

Overall, 11 Minnesota restaurants and chefs are nominated as semifinalists for James Beard Awards this year, including four others from Minneapolis.

Newcomers to the local dining scene Bûcheron, located in Southwest, and Vinai are up for Best New Restaurant.

Ann Ahmed of Khâluna (and Gai Noi in Loring Park) is nominated again, but this time for Outstanding Chef, a national honor, rather than Best Chef: Midwest. Instead, the regional chef award could go to another local: Diane Moua of Diane’s Place, who was nominated twice for Outstanding Pastry Chef for her work at Spoon and Stable before she struck out on her own, along with Furukawa.

Finalists will be announced in April. Winners will claim their medals during a June 16 award ceremony in Chicago.