City Cast 6 Award Winners: Food & Drink

This year, City Cast DC is conducting our inaugural City Cast 6 awards, where we recognize six local leaders transforming six distinct industries — Politics, Food & Drink, Business & Development, Sustainability, Music, and Literature.

After months of research, interviews, and deliberation, we're proud to announce the winner of the Food & Drink category.

🏆 WINNER: Najmieh Batmanglij

Chosen by our panel of experts.

Najmieh Batmanglij was born and raised in Iran, moving to the U.S. in 1983 and starting her cooking career. The Washington Post hailed her as “the guru of Persian cuisine.”

Her multiple cookbooks have won dozens of awards, including “Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets,” which The New York Times selected as one of the best cookbooks of Fall 2018. The publication also declared Batmanglij as one of “seven immigrant women who changed the way Americans eat.”

In May, she brought her recipes to life with her first restaurant in Tysons Corner which serves upscale Iranian food.

🙌 PEOPLE’S CHOICE: Najmieh Batmanglij

Based on votes by listeners and readers.

🥈 RUNNERS-UP:

Nominated by other experts in the field.

• Masako Morishita – The first Japanese woman to helm the kitchen at Perry’s restaurant in Adams Morgan and former chef at Maxwell Park.
• Kevin Tien – Owner of the critically-acclaimed Vietnamese restaurant Moon Rabbit, which is reopening in Penn Quarter.

Our Selection Process:

To ensure the veracity of the awards, we chatted with dozens of field experts across D.C., conducted listener and reader polls, and did our own research to come up with nominations. Finally, we had you vote to choose a "People's Choice" winner. And we had our panel of experts — Washington Post's Michael Brice-Saddler, Axios' Anna Spiegel, and City Cast's David Plotz — confer and select a winner per category.