Bean pie wins a James Beard Award
Two out of two is crazy.
This weekend I won a second James Beard Award for a Chicago Tribune article on bean pie. I won’t be writing much about it here today, but I’ll be sharing some photos, official and unofficial, as well as my speech.
Here’s a gift link to the winning bean pie article if you’d like to read it.
The full video and speech is below. For paying subscribers, I’ve also shared for the first time, my speech from 2022. This speech was for the Eater article on Pakistani mangoes.
In my speech, I thanked you all — my free and paying subscribers — for supporting my work. Thanks to Asad Chishti for grabbing the videos and transcripts.
2026 acceptance speech
Below is the text of my speech after winning a James Beard Award in the Foodways category for my Chicago Tribune article on bean pie.
FRANCIS LAM: The next batch of awards presents the best in food journalism, and the food journalism is remarkable and that it can encompass everything from the craft of dumplings to the chemicals going into our cereal, to how many licks it actually takes to get to the bottom of a Tootsie Pop. It is actually 252. There’s science behind this up Purdue University.
So we’re going to begin with foodways. The pieces recognized in this category illuminate the cultural foodways of our nation. They illustrate the importance of the bean pie in Black American Muslim communities here in Chicago. The cultural memory of hazelnut spread and the legacy of an unsung American biscuit heroine. The food waste nominees are:
ANNOUNCER:
Ahmed Ali Akbar, Chicago Tribune
Lauren Collins, The New Yorker
Jessica Vaughn Martin, The New Territory magazine
LAM: And the winner is Chicago’s own Ahmed Ali Akbar.
AHMED: Bismillah hir rahman nir rahim
Thank you so much for this.
The last time I was up here, I won a James Beard Award for underground mangoes, which reflected my Pakistani and South Asian community. But this one is so much sweeter and more spiritually fulfilling, winning for bean pie, which represents, in my opinion, for me at least, the more important transformational American Muslim community. That first award transformed my personal life/professional life —although I’m still unemployed and a freelance writer…. People still stop calling my articles blogs. (laughter)But this one…. sorry, I should wait.
But this one, I submitted it because my whole life I wanted people to know how deeply meaningful the bean pie is to Muslim and Black communities in America.
I’ve been eating the dish since I was a child as a Muslim growing up attending the Islamic Center of Saginaw. I was raised on a diet of anti-colonialism and Black Muslim theories of civil rights and resistance of Jim Crow racism.
There’s a beauty in the child of immigrant Muslims who could be physically, intellectually, and spiritually nourished by a dish that symbolized Black liberation from the historical effects of slavery.
I owe so much to the struggles of the Black Muslim pioneers before me. I’ll name some of them. Sorry, I didn’t expect to cry, but Brothers Rashada, Robert, Saleem, brother Naeem, sister Edester, Nadyah, Mary.
Now we can have some fun.
If you know anything about the bean pie, you might know it’s sold by street sellers in a suit and tie, selling a paper. I grew up eating the auntie’s pies, so it was my great life’s joy to go to the South Side of Chicago and meet Brother James 40X who is a bean pie seller.
He is here with us today in the audience. And he looks great as always.
As a writer, I am but an echo in the gorge of energy and noor of my sources. From Black Americans to Palestinians to Bosnians to Kurds to Sudanese to my own desi people. I want to thank my father, Waheed Akbar, my sister, Amna, Roshi Bhai (my cousin), who’s here. Thanks to my late mother, Raana Akbar, who taught me to write better than any other experience in my life.
Thanks to my siblings Zainab and Nate and Sa’dia (Ed note: and my niece Laila).
Thank you to Aziza, the person who made me become a rad brown dad. To Salimah.
Thank you to my editor, Kayla Samoy, who was so patient as I took so long to finish. the food team at the Chicago Tribune, thanks to the James Beard Foundation, thanks to the other nominees.
Thanks to the city of Chicago. You guys called me a Chicago writer the first time I was up here. I’d been here for ten days! But now I can be a Chicago writer. I will take it.
Thanks to Masjid Taqwa, Imani’s Bean Pie. Supreme Bean Pie, Paradise Bean Pie, Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream. And of course, James 40X.
Thank you to the people who have contributed and paid for my work at radbrowndads.com. Thanks to everybody who supports my work.
Subhanallah, Alhamdulillah and Allahu Akbar.
And below is my speech from 2022.
