Chef Rob Rubba opened Oyster Oyster, an environmentally conscious restaurant in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood, in 2021.

/ Oyster Oyster

Chef Rob Rubba opened Oyster Oyster, an environmentally conscious restaurant in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood, in 2021. Oyster Oyster

Oyster Oyster Chef Rob Rubba won the big prize Monday night at the James Beard Awards: Outstanding Chef.

The honor in a nationwide category — Rubba was up against Niki Nakayama of two-Michelin-star n/naka in Los Angeles and Erik Ramirez of acclaimed Peruvian spot Llama Inn in Brooklyn, among others — is a major one. The James Beard Awards are widely viewed as one of the highest honors for the hospitality industry in the U.S., often called “Oscars of the food world.” To keep with the Oscars analogy, Rubba took home a “Big 5” award (think Best Actor, Best Director, etc.). The last time that happened was when Chef Kwame Onwuachi, formerly of Kith/Kin, took home the Rising Culinary Star award in 2019.

Rubba is chef/partner of Oyster Oyster, a restaurant in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood that celebrates vegetables, sustainability, and local food. The restaurant’s tasting menu highlights the bounty of the Mid-Atlantic and changes with the seasons. Maintaining the ethos from start to finish, patrons can even plant their physical menu — it’s embedded with flower seeds. Oyster Oyster was two years in the making because of COVID-19 delays and has been widely praised since opening in July 2021.

Oyster Oyster is a vegetable-forward, sustainability-minded restaurant located at 1440 8th St NW. Amanda Michelle Gomez / DCist/WAMU
Koji marinated sweet potatoes, with braised greens, pea tendrils, and peanut broth, is a recent spring menu dish. Amanda Michelle Gomez / DCist/WAMU
The brown hmong rice dish featured a BBQ rubbed lions mane mushroom and the first ramps of the season. Amanda Michelle Gomez / DCist/WAMU
Oyster tartare with apple, cilantro, and seaweed emulsion. Amanda Michelle Gomez / DCist/WAMU
Rubba once told DCist/WAMU: “Chefs throw peaches in sorbet all summer, but the fruit is the juiciest for just three weeks. We only serve them we can capture the magic of when you’re biting into a peach at the orchard.”Oyster Oyster
Oyster Oyster's tasting menu and restaurant decor focuses on mushrooms and bivalves. Oyster Oyster

The James Beard Awards is one of several accolades for Rubba and Oyster Oyster: Food & Wine named him one of its best new chefs last year for the “energy and excitement” he put into the restaurant’s menu; Oyster Oyster was awarded a Michelin star in 2022; and the restaurant was a James Beard finalist in the Best New Restaurant category last year, but it, along with other D.C. area chefs and restaurants, ultimately went home empty handed.

Rubba was also the only D.C. award winner Monday night. The James Beard Foundation had named three local chefs and restaurants as finalists, in addition to Rubba. Michael Rafidi of Albi was a finalist for Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic and Causa, led by Chef Carlos Delgado, made it to the final round for Best New Restaurant. But those prizes were awarded to Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Kann of Portland, Oregon.

The winners were named in an awards ceremony in Chicago. A tearful Rubba accepted the award, thanking his family and his business partner, Max Kuller — a veteran D.C. restaurateur of Doi Moi and now-shuttered Estadio.

The awards were not without controversy. The James Beard Foundation created a new process to weed out problematic nominees, after the public discovered that past awards went to individuals with a history of workplace abuse. But the new process had many challenges, according to the New York Times, including a blanket confidentiality of ethics investigations which led at least three judges to resign.

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