By Virginie Boone

The James Beard Media Awards were announced earlier this week and it’s worth noting that one of the winners is Guerneville-based Chef Preeti Mistry, who was given an audio programming award for the podcast series, “Loading Dock Talks with Chef Preeti Mistry.”

The James Beard Broadcast Media Awards recognize nonfiction works in English from digital and terrestrial media, including radio, television, podcasts, documentaries, online sites, and social media that cover food and beverage topics. This year is also the year Martha Stewart became the first member of the Beard’s Broadcast Media Hall of Fame.

Mistry was born in London and raised in the United States, becoming the executive chef at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco and at Google headquarters after earning a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute. Mistry then cofounded Juhu Beach Club restaurant in Oakland, competed on Top Chef Season 6, and was nominated as Best Chef of the West twice by the James Beard Foundation.

During Covid, Mistry moved to Guerneville and started to learn about agriculture at a small farm in Sebastopol called Radical Family Farms that specializes in Asian heirloom vegetables. Along the way, the chef also served as resident ambassador for J Vineyards & Winery’s Shifting the Lens culinary series.

Accessible through Apple, Spotify and other formats, Mistry’s weekly loading dock talks feature people in the food industry, from chefs and cookbook authors to bakers, bartenders, sommeliers, gardeners, educators and others.

One recent episode is with Leah Scurto, owner of Pizza Leah in Windsor, where the topics discussed include the secrets to great pizza making, how Leah became a pizza (and dough) master, and her mom’s recipe for picadillo. Scurto opened Pizza Leah in April 2020 during the height of the pandemic, but a good time for take-out, and soon became a locals’ favorite, her pizza picked as one of the Best Dishes of 2020 by the San Francisco Chronicle that year.

Farming continues to be a focus in the James Beard 2025 Book Award-winning Convivir: Modern Mexican Cuisine in California’s Wine Country by Rogelio Garcia and Andrea Lawson Gray (Abrams). The author is the executive chef at Michelin-starred Auro at Four Seasons Resort in Calistoga who sources widely from across Northern California for his ingredients and inspiration.

He describes his food as a mix of his Mexican mother’s home cooking with his classic French training garnished with a bit of Spain along the way, all made possible by the fields, orchards, and farms, and the ranchers, farmers, and fishers outside his door. He previously cooked alongside Doug Keane at Cyrus.

Notable semifinalists in 2025 include Chef Ari Weiswasser of Glen Ellen Star, a semifinalist for Best Chef California in 2025, and Healdsburg’s Quail and Condor, a semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery in 2025. Previous Beard Award finalists and winners from Sonoma County include Chef Karen Taylor Waikiki of El Molino Central, brewer Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing Co., and Ted Lemon of Littorai Wines.

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