Food & Wine Announces People's Best New Chef

CNN's Eatocracy blog is partnering up with esteemed Food & Wine magazine to add a new category to the magazine's prestigious Best New Chefs award. Traditionally, Food & Wine's editors anoint 10 chefs from across the country as their Best New Chefs, and on that front nothing will change. However adding the people's choice element obviously brings a new slant to the feature, as well as the opportunity for chefs and restaurants to use social media to help spread the word to encourage restaurant goers to vote. Food & Wine has identified 10 chefs from each region, and you can have until March 1 to vote for your favorite.

The Northwest nominees include five Portland chefs, three restaurants from Seattle, one from the Oregon coast and (not surprisingly) one from Lummi Island. The contest defines a new chef as someone who has run a kitchen for less than five years.

Washington nominees include Jason Franey of Canlis, Brian McCracken & Dana Tough of Spur, Shaun McCrain from the Book Bindery and Blaine Wetzel from Lummi Island's Willows Inn.

Now it's your turn to cast your vote on the top up-and-coming chefs who best represent fine dinning, innovation and vision. The Seattle contenders represent a fine sampling of restaurants in the Northwest. Last year, the only Best New Chef designee from our region was Spinasse's Jason Stratton.

Earlier this year the New York Times Wetzel's kitchen at Willows Inn as one the ten restaurants in the country worthy of a plane ride. Wetzel made the surprising decision to head to the sleepy San Juans straight from the number one-rated kitchen in the world, Noma in Copenhagen. His arrival certainly brings a new level of fame to the sleep San Juan island as well as the opportunity to incorporate Noma chef Rene Redzepi's philosophies into Northwest cuisine.

Spur has already received accolades from Food & Wine, which puts the Belltown restaurant on its "go-to list of the most outstanding, must visit restaurants in the world." Tough and McCracken are inspired by molecular gastronomy and modern cuisine, and both hail from traditional training at Thomas Keller's French Laundry. Examples of their unique style include a spectacular sous vide fried chicken at Tavern Law.

McCrain is the newest kid on the block with the recently opened Book Bindery. However his roots also include training in the Keller camp at esteemed Per Se. Since its opening late last year, Book Bindery has received glowing reviews for the distinguished and elevated cuisine.

Last and certainly not least, Franey represents a Seattle institution. From Food & Wine on why he's amazing: "Because he has somehow kept his restrained and subtle style of cooking while maintaining Canlis's famed lavishness." Franey represents a new generation of Canlis, one that brings a level of modernity to the classics.

Seattlest is contemplating our meals from the past year at these most worthy restaurants. Of course we expect the social media forces to be strong. Already emails and websites are encouraging patrons to cast their vote. Which contender gets your vote?