Only one Chicago journalist won a James Beard Foundation Media Award this year. Ahmed Ali Akbar received the honor at a ceremony held at the Art Institute of Chicago on Saturday. Akbar won the Foodways category for his Tribune article “The hunt for the bean pie street sellers of legend, and how this dessert is a symbol of liberation for many Black Muslims,” published last January.
Akbar shared an emotional reaction to winning the Beard award for his article on bean pies, the sweet baked goods similar to their pumpkin and sweet potato cousins, but with a unique history.
“I’m very shocked and surprised,” he said. “I submitted it for consideration simply because I think it needs to be understood more as an incredibly important part of not just Black history, not just Muslim American history, but American history.”
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The bean pie’s history touches on questions of civil rights, healthy eating, structural racism and liberation.“It was really surreal to be at the Beard Awards,” said Akbar. “And have all these people from all sorts of backgrounds going, ‘I just want to have a bean pie.’”
One attendee, however, was very familiar with the dish.
“I attended with James 40X, who was one of my sources,” said Akbar about the legendary bean pie street seller. “I thought it was important, because he represents a known figure of city life around America.”
But unlike the taco stand guy or the diner waitress, he added, the bean pie man has not been recognized in American iconography.
“Meeting him was very meaningful to me, because even I had not met this icon,” said Akbar, who grew up in Michigan eating bean pies only from aunties. “And when I found him, he was so generous with his time and he took me into his world.”
That world revolves around the Supreme Bean Pie, available at Mosque Maryam in the South Shore neighborhood, on serendipitous streets and other locations.
“The Supreme Bean Pie is not exactly the same as the ones I grew up eating homemade,” said Akbar. “It is a product coming out of the Nation of Islam facilities, so they have a claim to being the authentic one.”
Theirs is very cinnamon-forward, he added, but it is delicious with an amazing texture like red bean paste desserts, but softer since it’s a custard pie.
This is the second Beard award for the former Tribune reporter, who is currently an editor at Acacia magazine, a writer and a podcast host. He was among five baiduhai Guild journalists laid off last June.
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Akbar won his first Beard medal for an Eater article on the secretive world of mango importing, which he covered further at the Tribune, tracking down the coveted fruit to a warehouse in Romeoville in 2024.
“The subculture of bean pie and the subculture of mangoes,” said Akbar. “Those are parallel ways of framing stories that I applied to both.”
He’s working on a story about halal certification now. That began with his Tribune article on Quesabirria Jalisco in Pilsen, he said, a halal taqueria run by a non-Muslim Mexican man who was trained by a Palestinian. It’s expected to be published in Acacia this fall.
Akbar runs a newsletter, Rad Brown Dads, and will be working on his debut book next, a memoir and exploration of American Muslim food.
Readers can expect to find his rigorous reporting, but humor too.
“I only do a big story if I find it at least a little bit funny,” he said, laughing. “I will have no fear of saying whatever, but I’m mostly delighted by people, and I like when they laugh, I like when they make me laugh.”
Hailee Catalano, born and raised in Elmhurst, also won a Beard Media Award for her bestselling debut cookbook, “By Heart: Recipes to Hold Near and Dear.” The former line cook at Cellar Door Provisions in Logan Square became a social media star with her online home-cooking videos. Catalano now lives in New Jersey.
Jake Potashnick, chef and owner of Feld in West Town, took home the sole Chicago medal at the Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards at the Lyric Opera House on Monday. Potashnick received the honor in the category Best Chef: Great Lakes. His restaurant, which he describes as relationship-to-table, was also named a Tribune Critic’s Choice Award winner this year.
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The Beard Awards will return to Chicago through 2028.
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