Chef Vishwesh Bhatt of Mississippi has earned one of the culinary world’s highest honors, winning the 2019 James Beard Foundation Award for “Best Chef” in the South.

Ahmedabad-born Bhatt had been nominated five times in the past for his work at Snackbar, a Southern-French brasserie hybrid in Oxford, MS. This year Bhatt, the only Mississippi chef nominated, beat out several well-known Southern chefs, including Slade Rushing of Brennan’s in New Orleans and Isaac Toups of Toups’ Meatery, also in New Orleans.

The James Beard Awards are the most prestigious honors in the food industry, recognizing the best in food — from chefs, restaurants, cookbooks to food media and restaurant designs.  All James Beard Award winners receive a certificate and a medallion engraved with the James Beard Foundation Awards insignia.

Bhatt has worked as a chef in Oxford for over 20 years. Last year he told Mississippi Today that he thinks of himself as a Southern chef because his style of cooking represents where he is now, but references his Indian roots.

“My heritage and where I grew up is very much a part of me, but this is home and this is what I do. I’m a Southern chef. I’m from here. I’ve spent more time here than anywhere else,” he said.

“It’s an incredible feeling winning the award,” he was quoted as saying by newsreports in his acceptance speech at the awards ceremony in Chicago, IL. “You kind of go numb.”