The 2026 James Beard Nominees Are Out & A Book On Mumbai Has Made It

For food lovers, the James Beard Foundation Awards have long carried the kind of prestige often reserved for the Oscars—except here, the spotlight falls on chefs, restaurants, food writing, photography, and the stories that shape how we eat. And this year, an Indian title has found a place on that global stage. MUMBAI: A Journey Through Its Kitchens, Streets, and Stories, published by Heirloom Project and conceived by Sri Bodanapu, has been nominated in the Visuals category. Edited by Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, photographed by Bhavya Pansari and designed by Nandini Thirani, the book explores the city through its kitchens, streets, markets, communities, and food memories. ​

“I wanted to create something that felt beautifully designed and immersive—a book that documented food cultures in a deeper, more emotional way, rather than simply being a recipe book or an academic document,” says Bodanapu, on how the essence of the book came to be. And the nomination itself was a consequence—something straight out of their “wildest dreams,” as the editor, Ghildiyal, puts it.

Every year, the Foundation’s Media Awards recognise some of the most influential voices in global food culture, spanning books, journalism, broadcast media, and visual storytelling. And the Visuals category, in particular, recognises books on food or beverage featuring exceptional graphic design, art, or photography. And this book does just that.

Using photography, essays, recipes, art, and design, the book documents Mumbai’s culinary identity and history. Rather than functioning in the limited boundaries of a cookbook or recipe book, it captures the movement, texture, and sensory overload of the city itself—from Koliwadas and Ramzan feasts to bakeries, street food stalls, seafood markets, and neighbourhood food cultures that collectively define Mumbai’s edible landscape.

In conversation with Outlook Traveller Eats, the people behind the book share their thoughts.

On How The Book Came to Be

“Mumbai is a city that overwhelms you visually before it says anything else,” says Bodanapu. While there’s a world of writing and documentation on this much-loved city, this project of passion does something slightly different.

Because the city is too vast and rapidly evolving for a “definitive guide,’ Bodanpu and the rest of the team wanted to create a visual and cultural archive of what gives it its peculiar identity. “The book looks beyond restaurants and iconic dishes. It highlights communities and individuals who shape the identity of the city—from the fisherwomen of Koliwada, the lesser-documented Pathare Prabhu community, and the many “wallahs” whose labour and small businesses keep the city moving every day,” says Bodanapu. Therefore, it’s less about consuming Mumbai and more about sitting back and seeing it. At the end of the day, there are millions who love and cherish the city, and this book “celebrates the love for Mumbai as a city and the uniqueness it is,” as Ghildyal puts it.

On noticing a white space in how food cultures from India and Asia were being documented, the team decided to fill it. “There are so many incredible stories here, but very little elevated design-led storytelling coming from the region itself,” adds Bodanapu. And Mumbai became the book they decided to begin with because of their shared love for it, yes, but also because it felt very representative of the vastness of the country. Hence, MUMBAI not only documents but also challenges stereotypes, highlights depth and diversity, and presents the expanse of geography, history, and culture in India’s food. 

According to Bodanapu, they were especially careful and intentional about how they visualised the city: “not by sanitising it, but by presenting a more holistic perspective of Mumbai in all its complexity and energy.”

But why visualise in the first place? Why not just document in words?

“Mumbai is shaped as much by the people and environments around it as the dishes themselves…Words alone would never fully hold that energy,” says Bodanapu. And hence, the visual language became essential to telling the story authentically. As the editor herself puts it, “Any page you open will transport you right to narrow lanes of Mumbai.”

On the challenges front, something the team struggled with was resisting the urge to romanticise a city that was already very romanticised. “Mumbai is endlessly photographed, but we wanted the visuals to feel lived-in and deeply human—not postcard-like. Finding that balance between beauty and reality took a great deal of attention,” claims Bodanapu. And from an editorial perspective, presenting the city’s historical timeline in a succinct, fluid manner proved increasingly difficult. According to Ghildyal, “Bringing the history of the city to life involved me having to learn and unlearn a lot.”

Other Nominations For 2026

Beyond the nomination in question, this year’s James Beard shortlist is representative of just how expansive contemporary food storytelling has become. Today, it stretches far beyond simple recipes into realms of memoir, photography, history, identity, and cultural documentation. Hence, recognising work that explores food not just as cuisine, but as memory, migration, politics, and community.

In the Visuals category, Sri Bodanapu’s brainchild appears alongside Mali Bakes: Make and decorate the retro cakes of your dreams (by Andy Warren with Daniel Hermann-Zoll, Vicky Valsamis, and Luke Whitten), and The Japanese Art of Pickling & Fermenting: Preserving vegetables and family traditions (by Michelle Mackintosh with Meryl Batlle, Rochelle Eagle, and Yoko Nakazawa), two books recognised for their strong graphic identity, photography, and visual storytelling.

The International category highlights titles such as Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honouring the Past by Eric Adjepong with Korsha Wilson, Kin: Caribbean Recipes for the Modern Kitchen by Marie Mitchell, and THAI: Anywhere and Everywhere by Nat Thaipun. These books are special because they place regional cuisines within larger conversations around heritage and identity.

The Literary Writing category, meanwhile, expands into personal and political narratives. Titles such as Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, The Last Sweet Bite, and Strong Roots: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Ukraine reflect the increasing prominence of food memoirs as a form of cultural and even political storytelling.

Indian cuisine also appears elsewhere on the shortlist. In the Vegetable-Focused Cooking category, Dal Chawal: 85 Vegetarian Indian Recipes Combining the Power of Dal and Rice by Sapna Punjabi received a nomination, highlighting the growing global interest in regional and home-style Indian cooking traditions.

The 2026 awards ceremony will take place in Chicago in June, where winners across Book, Broadcast Media, and Journalism categories will be announced.

What This Nomination Means

Ultimately, this nomination comes at a time when we’re witnessing a growing global interest in Indian food storytelling. Storytelling that goes beyond restaurant culture alone. Books rooted in regional memory, community narratives, and local foodways are finally finding a place in international culinary conversations. And the nomination of this book is no different.

While discussing the 25 years she has spent in the food writing, blogging, and documenting industries, Rushina Munshaw Ghildyal, also the author of Chutney: a compendium of stories and recipes, says that Indian food has rarely been recognised. She’s grown as a writer while regarding the James Beard as a beacon, looking forward to its nominations as the holy grails of food and cooking. “Did I think my name would be among the greats? No, not ever. I still don’t know how to feel,” she concludes.

According to Bodanapu, “Beyond a personal milestone, it’s more a moment of recognition for the richness and complexity of Mumbai’s food culture and the many communities and histories that shape it.”

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