The award-winning chef duo at one of Denver’s most beloved Vietnamese-inspired restaurants, sắp sửa, says their dream of winning a James Beard Foundation award was crushed after fellow well-known chefs in the city complained to the prestigious culinary organization.
Over two weeks in September, Anna Nguyen and her husband, Ni, found themselves under investigation by the foundation, triggered by a complaint about Ni’s social media posts.
Anna had wanted to work in a kitchen since she was 12. She started culinary school the day after she turned 21, launching her career from a minuscule apartment in a rough part of San Jose, California, near the International Culinary Center. She’d hung a list of high-end restaurants on her fridge where she wanted to work. She wanted to work somewhere with James Beard Awards. She wanted James Beard Awards.
By the middle of 2025, she seemed well on her way. Both Anna and Ni had snagged nominations from James Beard for the Emerging Chef awards. Ni Nguyen was honored as a semifinalist. The restaurant had also been named as a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant in 2024. They were asked to represent Denver in the James Beard Foundation’s Taste America series, and signed a contract with the foundation’s campus dining initiative that brings innovative cuisine to college dining halls.
Then it started to fall apart. The Alcott Group, a third-party HR firm hired by the James Beard Foundation, conducted an investigation, but its findings did not lead to any formal ethics determination, according to a letter sent to the Nguyens in October.
Despite the vaguely worded clearance, the foundation canceled sắp sửa’s Taste America event and terminated their campus dining contract, offering to pay $5,000 “so that you are not financially impacted,” the letter stated.
Ni traced the ethics complaint to a letter sent to the foundation. He posted the letter online — which misspelled his first name as “Nhi” — and claimed it was crafted by someone he referred to as a “legacy chef in Denver.”
The letter claims that Ni Nguyen was “publicly targeting, bullying, and disparaging fellow chefs, restaurateurs, and members of the media in Denver’s hospitality community,” as well as “continually invoking race as a shield for this behavior, which is deeply offensive to many immigrant and minority chefs in Denver who work tirelessly to build bridges in our community rather than divide it.”
Anna felt disappointed, then heartbroken, then wronged. “It’s just like what they say,” she said. “You should never meet your heroes.”
The “Oscars of the food world” nightmare
The James Beard awards have for decades been considered one of the most prestigious culinary honors in America, referred to as the “Oscars of the food world.” And similar to the Oscars, the culinary awards have fielded their share of criticism over a lack of diversity.
In 2020, the foundation decided not to announce any winners for 2020 or 2021, originally citing complications due to COVID-19. It was later revealed that there were no Black winners on the 2020 list — a bad look for the foundation after the summer of Black Lives Matter protests — and that several chefs had been asked to take themselves out of the running after personal and professional allegations surfaced.
In 2022, the foundation rebuilt its awards to consider chefs and restaurants that align with its values: equity, transparency, respect, integrity and community. They also have to serve great food.
Part of that overhaul introduced an ethics committee and a tip line, where people could send signed or anonymous complaints about chefs associated with the foundation.
In August, the Nguyens got an email from James Beard CEO Clare Reichenbach asking them to meet on Zoom, where she informed them the foundation received “negative information” that warranted a third-party investigation.
On Sept. 12, the couple jumped on a Zoom call with the Alcott Group. They questioned Ni’s posts targeting specific chefs around town, including Dana Monfort, who received backlash over her family’s support of Donald Trump after opening a Cherry Creek “bodega.”
“I was calling out the hypocrisy of being MAGA while owning a bodega,” Ni told The Colorado Sun of an Instagram post that the investigators asked him about.
The investigators also asked Ni about posts calling out Juan Padró, cofounder of Culinary Creative Group, or CCG.
CCG has several James Beard and Michelin-recognized restaurants in its portfolio, including Mister Oso, Ash’Kara and A5 Steakhouse. Last year, two former employees sued CCG, alleging that the company misrepresented how much of the 20% service fee tacked on to customer checks actually went to employees. The case is still pending.
Padró, normally outspoken about the joys and pains of restaurant survival, declined to comment publicly. He also stepped down as CEO on Wednesday as part of a succession plan in the works for three years and unrelated to the lawsuit, said new CEO Richard Flaherty, who previously served as CEO for Punch Bowl Social. Padró remains an equity holder and strategic advisor.
“We’re aware that there’s a lot being said about Culinary Creative Group online,” Flaherty said in an email. “We remain focused on working to finalize case law as it relates to the successful outcome of the recent lawsuit, to our progressive and fair hospitality practices, and to incubating and empowering chefs and creatives to develop distinctive culinary voices.”
As far as his public allegations against Padró, Ni said he had received direct messages from female staffers at CCG restaurants after he started posting about the lawsuit, and “just went shooting from the hip,” he said.
“Reflecting back, tone matters when you’re a minority, and you need to be buttoned up in ways to get your message across,” Ni said. “I hadn’t learned those lessons yet. I was just kinda posting wildly on social media.”
At the end of the Zoom call, investigators told the Nguyens that they had everything they needed, and felt they could convey the couple’s side of the story to Reichenbach at the foundation. The couple felt relieved, even confident.
Then they got the email from Reichenbach canceling their contracts. Neither chef was nominated for awards this year.
Though the James Beard Foundation states that formal ethics complaints do not have bearing on award selections, Anna and Ni think it’s unlikely that they’ll ever find themselves in the running again.
The James Beard Foundation declined to comment for this story.
Food, friends and a new freedom
Ni Nguyen is known for being outspoken online and supporting his beliefs, employees and friends.
Before Chinese-American restaurant MAKfam opened in late 2023, he invited its chefs to host a pop-up at sắp sửa.
“That really put us on the map with the Denver food scene. I’ll always be grateful to him for that,” said MAKfam owner Doris Yuen, whose chef-husband, Kenneth Wan, was named a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef, Mountain last year. “He’s someone who’s very passionate about what he believes in and he really does take care of people who work for him. He really does practice the rising tide lifts all boats.”
The experience may have shaken Ni, but he hasn’t shied from using social media as a place to loudly, even defiantly, post about social justice issues. If anything, the investigation and its outcome have only encouraged him to double down.
In November, sắp sửa stopped serving Coca-Cola in favor of Palestine Cola, with a portion of sales donated to families in Gaza. On Jan. 30, the restaurant closed for the day so employees could join the nationwide protest condemning the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown in Minneapolis that left two American citizens dead.
He has also openly shared his thoughts on social media about how the James Beard Foundation’s efforts to diversify its awards has led to chefs of color being “blacklisted and shunned” when unfounded claims are made against them.
“Our moves were so calculated, like moving in an open-air prison. Now it’s like: What does my activist brain want to say today?” Ni said. “Looking back, I had to clear everything on three levels. I had to be like, will it affect Anna, what will PR think, will this affect James Beard? Now, it’s just: Anna.”
Anna told someone at the foundation that it would be OK with her if they were never nominated again.
“And I meant it,” she said. “It’s just not what it’s about, and that’s a hard thing to realize.”
What does it feel like to let go of a decades-long dream?
“Freedom, baby!!!” Anna said. “Was it a depressing six months? Yes. Absolutely. I mean, we wanted to win one, we wanted to take the staff to Chicago. We wanted it so bad.”
“So bad,” Ni echoed.
“So bad,” she said again. “But I’m glad to be on the other side of it. It feels more honest.”