The 2026 Restaurant and Chef America's Classics® Award Winners

Today, we announce the 2026 James Beard America's Classics® Award winners!

Part of the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards, the America's Classics® celebrate independently owned restaurants with timeless appeal. These institutions reflect local character and cultural traditions and serve as an enduring anchor for their communities by serving delicious food across many years.

This year’s winners join more than 100 restaurants across the country that have received the Award since the category’s inception in 1998. They will be celebrated at the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards ceremony on Monday, June 15, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Here are the 2026 America's Classics®.

America’s Classics: California

The Serving Spoon
Inglewood, CA
Current Owners: Justin Johnson and Jessica Bane  

The Serving Spoon in Inglewood, California, is a multi-generational, family-owned restaurant that has served as a vital social and cultural anchor for the Black community in Los Angeles for over 40 years. The always-bustling breakfast and lunch hub welcomes all who walk through its swinging glass doors, from neighbors to celebrities to politicians. Solo diners perch along the counter overlooking the kitchen, while groups of friends and family gather around garnet booths. Warm smiles and genuine care from the restaurant's tight-knit staff—servers make it a point to remember regulars’ names and orders—keep folks coming back. Combination platters built around proteins, such as crisp-golden catfish filets, fried chicken wings, and salmon croquettes, are served with thick slabs of buttered cornbread and a duo of sides, including the justly popular creamy grits and crowd-pleasers like macaroni and cheese and candied yams. Daily specials, like Wednesdays’ oxtails and weekends-only shrimp and grits, have garnered a devoted following throughout the Southland.

The Serving Spoon was founded in 1983 by Harold E. Sparks; his daughter, Angela, and her husband, J.C. Johnson, took ownership in 2004. Today, the business is run by Sparks’ grandchildren, Justin Johnson and Jessica Bane, who are not only committed to preserving their grandfather’s recipes but also the spirit of community. Referred to as "The Spoon" by many, the restaurant is cherished for its joyful hospitality and as a place where all can gather and feel at home over heaping portions of affordably priced and impeccably prepared Southern fare.

America’s Classics: Mid-Atlantic

Oyster House 
Philadelphia, PA 
Current Owner: Sam Mink  

Few restaurants straddle multiple eras of Philadelphia’s restaurant history like Oyster House. In a city that was defined for much of the 20th century by legendary seafood restaurants, Oyster House is the last of its generation. Specialties such as sherried snapper soup and the distinctive combination of fried oysters and chicken salad offer a direct link to 18th and 19th century Philadelphia food traditions. Three generations of the Mink family have been caretakers of this institution since 1947, when Samuel Mink bought Kelly’s on Mole Street, a locale whose roots date to 1901. David Mink, Samuel’s son, opened Oyster House at its current location on Sansom Street in 1976, where Samuel's grandson, Sam Mink, maintains the restaurant’s relevance.

The bright dining room, featuring whitewashed walls hung with antique oyster plates, thrums with the energy of a diverse cross-section of the city: families diving into clambake feasts, Market Street power lunchers devouring luxurious lobster rolls, and thirsty happy hour millennials sipping some of the city’s best martinis. The region’s top raw bar, overseen by master shuckers like Gary McCready and Ameen Lawrence, is the restaurant’s beating heart and spotlights New Jersey’s revitalized oyster industry. A willingness to showcase creative modern seafood cookery with sustainable dock-to-table ingredients has also kept this Philly standby up-to-date, and shines through in executive chef Joe Campoli’s vibrant crudos, deftly grilled fish, and contemporary classics like halibut glazed in black garlic over dashi, which sit alongside signatures like peerless crab cakes, bountiful fisherman’s stew, and rich butterscotch pudding. Oyster House is not just a venerable ambassador of Philadelphia food history—it remains one of the city’s most rewarding places to eat.

America’s Classics: Midwest

Johnny's Cafe 
Omaha, NE 
Current owners: Sally Kawa, Kari Kawa Harding, and Jack Kawa  

In a town famous for its steaks and steakhouses, Johnny's Cafe is a cut above the rest. After 103 years and three generations of family ownership, the south Omaha steakhouse feels as relevant today as it did when Frank Kawa, a first-generation immigrant from Poland, opened the restaurant in 1922. Today, Frank’s son, Jack Kawa, and grandchildren, Sally Kawa and Kari Harding, run the show. The Kawa family's roots are evident in the steakhouse's Polish vinaigrette (which you can now buy by the bottle) and signature (and complimentary) appetizer: a peppery, spreadable cottage cheese-esque dip similar to Polish gzik. But Johnny’s core menu is one of consistently well-executed steakhouse classics: crosshatched rib-eyes, hand-cut and -breaded onion rings, frosty martinis, and crème de menthe sundaes.

The handsome dining room feels like both a time capsule and a theme park for cattlemen with its longhorn door pulls, T-bone shaped joists, and saddle bar stools—not to mention the backlit landscape feature wall that’s been meticulously maintained since a 1970s remodel. While the Kawas have made careful updates to the space and menu over time, they’ve held fast to the traditions that have made Johnny’s an enduring Omaha institution.

America’s Classics: New York State

Eng’s 
Kingston, NY 
Current Owners: Tom Sit and Faye Sit 

Founded in 1927 by Jimmi Eng and his son, Paul, Eng's was Kingston’s first Chinese restaurant and has remained a stalwart at its current location since 1966. Under current operator Tom Sit (who has helmed Eng’s for over five decades with his wife, Faye), Eng’s continues to prepare its iconic egg rolls (made in-house with fresh vegetables) and Chinese American classics, including standouts like Singapore chow mei fun and the pu pu platter. Even after the pandemic forced a five-year shift to takeout-only, the restoration of its retro dining room, buffet nights, and live music programming show the Sits’ commitment to ensuring that Eng's remains a community anchor.

Despite being in his 80s, Sit continues to work daily (even on his supposed days off) underscoring his personal investment in every aspect of Eng's. Sit's own story is remarkable: born in Guangzhou in 1943, he fled China during the political upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, swimming to Hong Kong as one of the “freedom swimmers” before eventually making his way to the U.S. in 1974. In Kingston, he began working at Eng's as a cook (despite never having cooked professionally before); when Jimmi Eng retired a few years later, he assumed ownership of Eng’s. Under Sit’s stewardship, the restaurant has held fast to traditions and serves generations of Kingston families.

America’s Classics: Southeast

Figaretti’s Italian Restaurant 
Wheeling, WV 
Current Owner: Dino Figaretti 

The legend of Figaretti’s started with a sauce. In West Virginia’s northern panhandle, Sicilian immigrant Anna Figaretti started making homemade spaghetti sauce for homesick Italian neighbors who had immigrated to work in local coal mines. The demand for Anna’s sauce grew so quickly that she recruited her five sons to start delivering it, which quickly helped them establish roots in their new community. The popularity of that time-honored recipe prompted them to open Figaretti’s in 1948. Nearly 80 years and three generations later, Figaretti’s remains an iconic spot with a warm and cozy dining room that welcomes guests like a hug. The eldest Figaretti often still meets diners at the door, offering them a glass of wine while walking around the dining area and scooching people over to make room for new guests.

The scene is straight out of a storybook, but the heritage-driven food is fantastic in its own right. Guests are consistently wowed by traditional pastas, including an epic lasagna, housemade sausage and sauces (like the can’t-miss Fig’s Famous Appetizer, a plate of four sausages served alongside a slow-cooked garlic marinara with sauteed local peppers and onions); fresh-cut Prime steaks; and flown-in-fresh seafood, like the splendid black mussels in olive oil and garlic. Consistent, quality food and service have made Figaretti’s a popular regional go-to, and the family’s longtime support of the Special Olympics and legacy of feeding first responders during emergencies underscores their ethos of serving their community beyond the restaurant, too. 

America’s Classics: Southwest

Bob Taylor’s Ranch House 
Las Vegas, NV 
Current Owner: Jeff Special 

In a city built on reinvention, Bob Taylor’s Ranch House stands apart as one of Las Vegas’s oldest culinary anchors—a steakhouse born long before the glitter of the Strip, when the city was still dust, horizon, and wide-open desert. It opened in 1955 as the Ranch House Supper Club, set on a remote parcel of land northwest of downtown. Back then you didn’t stumble upon it—you chose to go; cruising past the edge of town for a proper steak became part of the experience. Bob Taylor wasn’t just the owner—he was the heart of the place. Stories from old-timers and online accounts paint him as an almost mythical figure behind the fire pit: a man who’d tend the mesquite grill himself, barefoot in the gravel, feeling the coals’ heat and flipping thick steaks not with tongs, but with his fingers when he felt the timing was right. That hands-on bravado set the tone for the steakhouse’s premise: meat imbued with smoke, char, and the kind of primal depth you only get from live-fire cooking.

Today, Bob Taylor’s Ranch House still feels like a time capsule of that philosophy. It’s widely regarded as the oldest operating steakhouse in Las Vegas, and its dining room, hung with Western and Hollywood memorabilia, feels lived-in and loved rather than staged. The menu stays true to its roots: thick, mesquite-grilled steaks, slow-smoked prime rib, classic seafood starters like shrimp scampi and crab-stuffed mushrooms, and hearty mains. It’s not chasing trends—it’s preserving a way of cooking and eating that’s tactile, real, and rooted in a man’s belief that steak was best served hot off the fire.