Caroline Glover of Annette Wins Best Chef, Mountain at the 2022 James Beard Awards

After a two-year pandemic hiatus, the James Beard Awards are back, celebrating with the theme Gather for Good. Five Colorado chefs filled the Best Chef, Mountain category lineup when the finalists were announced in March, but only one could walk away with the top prize.

Caroline Glover, chef/owner of Annette at Stanley Marketplace, was announced the winner at the June 13 awards ceremony in Chicago, which celebrated the diversity of the country’s dining scene and the industry’s strength and resilience through the pandemic.

“Two and a half years ago we shut our doors down for 24 hours,” Glover said while accepting the award. “Because of my staff and who they are, we reopened 24 hours later as a to-go restaurant, and many more iterations after that.”

Glover had been a semi-finalist in the category (formerly called Best Chef, Southwest) in 2018 and 2019, and was a nominee in 2020 – the first year the awards were canceled because of the pandemic.