The Inn at Little Washington has raked in another accolade: The restaurant’s chef and owner Patrick O’Connell is the recipient of the James Beard Foundation’s lifetime achievement award, the organization announced Thursday.

O’Connell opened the restaurant in Washington, Va., in 1978 in a garage rented for $200 a month, according to the Washington Post. Over the past 40 years, it grew into a destination for locally-sourced haute cuisine—these days, two diners can easily rack up a $500 dinner tab. In 2007, DCist declared the restaurant—located a roughly two-hour drive away from the District—“so worth it.” Last fall, Post food critic Tom Sietsema named the Inn to his first-ever D.C. dining hall of fame.

The restaurant was so lauded that when the Michelin Guide arrived to rank D.C. establishments in 2016, it made an exception to its District boundaries to include the Inn. O’Connell received two stars in each of Michelin’s first two years in D.C., and became the first restaurant on the District’s list to received a coveted three-star designation.

“I’m living proof that you can hide out in a mountain village with a population of 133 and still be discovered and recognized by your peers,” O’Connell said in a statement about his latest James Beard accolade. “The power of good food should never be underestimated.”

The news comes just two weeks after the James Beard Foundation announced the semifinalists for its prestigious awards, a list that included 20 D.C. chefs and restaurants, and more than a month after Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse won the James Beard Foundation’s America’s Classics award. O’Connell and other winners will be honored at a ceremony on May 6 in Chicago.