Justin Carlisle's new Ardent is a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for "Best New Restaurant" in the country.
Justin Aprahamian of Sanford and Braise's Dave Swanson have also reached the semifinals round, along with Jim Webster of Bayfield's Wild Rice, in the "Best Chef: Midwest" category.
All four chefs have been nominated previously for Beard Awards. Interestingly, no Madison chefs made the semifinal round.
The nominations are being announced this morning in Orlando, Fla. Check back for updates as they come.
The full list of semifinalists can be seen here.
The 2014 JBF Awards finalists will be announced Tuesday, March 18 in Chicago and the awards ceremony is slated for Monday, May 5 at Lincoln Center in New York City.
The Beard Book, Broadcast and Journalism Awards will be presented Friday, May 2 at New York's Gotham Hall.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
