Chef Karyn Tomlinson is the 2025 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: Midwest and chef-owner of Myriel in St. Paul. Her restaurant was named #9 Best Restaurant in America by Food & Wine, where she was also honored as a 2024 Best New Chef. Known for her “grandma cooking nouveau” style that blends Scandinavian and Minnesotan heritage with French training, Karyn made history as the first woman to win the national Cochon 555 whole-animal butchery competition. She’s reimagined fine dining through hyper-local sourcing, personally visiting small farms twice weekly and hand-foraging wild ingredients. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, and CBS Mornings.