Two Manhattan rooms just picked up food's biggest national prize. Borgo, the Italian spot at 124 East 27th Street in Flatiron, saw wine director Lee Campbell win Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service, and Lei, the 28-seat wine bar on Doyers Street in Chinatown, won Best New Restaurant, the James Beard Foundation announced at its June 15 ceremony at Chicago's Lyric Opera.
Campbell runs the cellar at Borgo, part of the Marlow Collective group, where chef Jordan Frosolone leads the kitchen. The beverage-service category recognizes sommeliers, wine directors, and bar leads working the floor rather than the stove — Campbell's win puts Borgo's wine program, not a specific dish, in the national conversation.
Lei's award is a bigger jump. Chef-owner Annie Shi opened the tiny Chinatown wine bar in June 2025, and just over a year later it beat out restaurants nationwide for Best New Restaurant, one of the Beard Awards' most competitive categories. The Doyers Street address seats fewer than 30, a scale that makes the national win notable on its own.
A third New York City winner came out of the same ceremony: chef Hooni Kim of Meju took Best Chef: New York State. Meju sits in Queens, so the win adds to the city's overall haul without touching Manhattan's count directly — Borgo and Lei are the borough's two.
Beard wins tend to reshape reservations fast. Both restaurants were already drawing attention before June — Lei from a run of local press since opening, Borgo as part of an established restaurant group — but a national win from the country's top culinary award typically tightens tables further at both addresses in the months after.
The beverage-service category has, in recent years, become one of the Beard Awards' closest-watched, as more Manhattan dining rooms build wine and cocktail programs into the pitch rather than treating them as an afterthought to the kitchen. Campbell's win for Borgo fits that shift. Lei's Best New Restaurant win, meanwhile, arrives for a wine bar built around natural and small-production bottles rather than a tasting menu, a sign of where the category's judges are looking this cycle.
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