Tara Monsod, the acclaimed executive chef of San Diego’s Michelin-recommended Animae restaurant, had two things to celebrate on Wednesday: Her 41st birthday and her achievement of making it to the final round of competition for the James Beard Foundation’s award for Best Chef: California.
It’s the second year in a row she has been named among the state’s top 5 finalists in what is the restaurant industry’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.
In 2024, Monsod became the first San Diego County chef in 34 years to make it to the final round of Beard competition. Now she has done it again. The winner will be announced June 16.
Since 2021, Monsod has headed up the kitchen at Animae, an Asian fusion steakhouse restaurant in downtown San Diego owned by the Puffer Malarkey Collective. Last June, she also became executive chef at PMC’s Le Coq, a contemporary French steakhouse in La Jolla.
Animae chef Tara Monsod is first-ever San Diego chef to be named a James Beard Award finalist
In a phone interview Wednesday afternoon, the North Park resident said getting the news that morning was like the cherry on top of a challenging but rewarding year.
“I am always so humbled. I’m just doing what I do everyday and grateful that things like this happen,” she said. “It’s nice to see that hard work pays off. I get a lot of compliments from people who say I’m so deserving, but I think they’ve seen me work my butt off over the years. I’ll outwork anybody and do whatever it takes to get things done.”
When Monsod was a James Beard finalist in 2024, she was only overseeing one restaurant kitchen. So she credits her kitchen staffs at both Animae and Le Coq for giving her the she needed to continue growing as both a chef and a leader in the past year.
“It’s been even more of a team effort, and at this point, they’re all representing me,” she said. “Every single person on the team worked hard to make sure we maintained who we are and what we bring to San Diego.”
Monsod is known for her leadership skills in the kitchen, her warm interactions with diners, her artful plating and the introduction of flavors, ingredients and recipes to the menus that reflect her own Filipino heritage.
Last year’s Best Chef: California winner, Lord Maynard Llera of Kuya Lord in Los Angeles, is a fellow Filipino chef, and Monsod said she’s proud to help him and others elevate awareness and conversations about Filipino food. This coming weekend, she will fly to a chefs conference in Philadelphia where she’ll be speaking on the topic alongside several of her Filipino colleagues.
“Filipino food is on this renaissance right now, and it’s starting to get a real flow,” she said. “Somebody joked with me that I’m an O.G. (of Filipino food) at this point, but I’m just getting started.”
Competing as finalists against Monsod for 2025 Best Chef: California are Oceanside resident Daniel Castillo of Heritage Barbecue in San Juan Capistrano, Richard Lee of Saison in San Francisco, Kosuke Tada of Mijoté in San Francisco and Jon Yao of Kato in Los Angeles. The finalists were chosen from a field of 20 semifinalists announced Jan. 22.
All of this year’s California chef finalists are people of color, a group Monsod said she’s honored to be a part of.
“Right now there’s a lot of diversity in our industry,” she said.”We’ve been around for a very long time, but we’ve always been in the background.”
Another thing about this year’s California finalists is that Monsod is the only woman on the list, just as she was the only woman last year. She said women make up only about 25% to 35% of professional chefs.
“I check a lot of boxes as a woman chef, Asian, queer and Filipino. It’s important to represent all those parts of me,” she said. “In a role like mine, it lays a brick in the road to show it’s possible for the rest of the people who want to do it in the future.”
Besides rolling out new dishes and prepping summer menus at both restaurants this spring, Monsod is ready to achieve another career first on April 13. She’s one of just seven American chefs invited to serve as a headlining chef at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio. That day she’ll be preparing a meal for the off-grid culinary series Outstanding in the Field.
“I’m really excited,” she said. “People love chefs. It’s a different time right now, and I’ll ride this wave as long as I can.”
