E.J. Lagasse—Beard finalist

E.J. Lagasse is a 2026 James Beard Award finalist for Emerging Chef, putting the 22-year-old chef of Emeril’s in one of U.S. dining’s top national races. (jamesbeard.org) The James Beard Foundation announced its restaurant and chef finalists on March 31, and named Lagasse alongside Fátima Juárez of Komal in Los Angeles, Rasheeda Purdie of Ramen by Ra in New York, Bailey Sullivan of Monteverde Restaurant & Pastificio in Chicago, and Adrian Torres of Maximo in West University Place, Texas. Winners are scheduled for June 15 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. (jamesbeard.org) Lagasse leads Emeril’s in New Orleans as chef and co-owner after returning in 2022, according to the restaurant group’s profile. The flagship restaurant reopened after an extensive renovation in 2023 with a menu that reworked Emeril Lagasse classics through a more modern tasting format. (emeril.org) His rise accelerated in 2025, when the Michelin Guide said he became the youngest chef ever to lead a two-Michelin-star kitchen. Michelin also gave him its 2025 American South Young Chef Award. (guide.michelin.com) The Beard nomination puts Lagasse in a different lane from the Michelin star system. Michelin rates restaurants, while the Emerging Chef award singles out an individual chef who is still early in a career but already shaping a restaurant’s identity. (jamesbeard.org) Lagasse’s name also carries a second storyline: he is the son of Emeril Lagasse, one of the most recognizable American television chefs of the last three decades. Emeril’s own team biography says E.J. started working in the kitchen at Meril at 13 and later trained at Café Boulud, Le Bernardin, Core by Clare Smyth, and Frantzén. (emeril.org) That background has made his career easy to frame as inheritance, but the public milestones now attached to his own name are recent and concrete. In 2023, La Liste gave him its New Talent of the Year award, and in 2024 Emeril’s added the American Automobile Association Five Diamond designation, Relais and Châteaux membership, and Les Grandes Tables du Monde membership, according to Emeril’s organization. (emeril.org) New Orleans has several 2026 James Beard finalists, and the city’s tourism bureau lists Lagasse among the local names headed into the June awards ceremony. That keeps Emeril’s in the middle of a broader New Orleans awards season, not just a family succession story. (neworleans.com) The next marker is June 15 in Chicago, when the Beard Foundation will decide whether Lagasse’s fast run from renovated flagship to national finalist ends with a medal. (jamesbeard.org)