At Frasca Food and Wine, the sweet potato dumplings come wrapped in carob flour and glazed in balsamic-soaked cherries. The juniper mousse arrives perched on a buckwheat financier. The hearty alpine bread dumplings carry whispers of wild mushroom, bone marrow and spruce.

After 21 years of obsessing over the tiny things, like the perfect tablecloth crease and the warmest possible greeting, Boulder’s beloved dining room has earned another national nod: a 2025 James Beard Award nomination for Outstanding Restaurant.

The 2025 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards winners will be announced at a ceremony in Chicago on June 16.

First nominated for an award in 2016, Frasca is once again in the running for one of the James Beard Foundation’s highest honors, recognizing restaurants that deliver consistent excellence across food, atmosphere, hospitality and operations. Over the years, the Pearl Street institution has racked up a tidy collection of accolades, including James Beard Awards for Outstanding Wine Program (2013) and Outstanding Service (2019), along with back-to-back Michelin Stars.

Still, partner Bobby Stuckey is quick to point out that accolades were never the aim — rather, just a byproduct of doing things right.

That ethos of steady, intentional improvement has shaped Frasca from the very beginning. Stuckey, who started his career as a teenage dishwasher in Arizona, rose through the hospitality world with stops at The Little Nell in Aspen and Chef Thomas Keller’s iconic Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry, where he met future business partner Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson. The two were drawn to the welcoming culture of Friuli, a unique region in northeastern Italy that bridges the Alps and the Adriatic Sea,

where family-run frascas (casual farmhouses marked by a leafy branch over the door) serve food, wine and unpretentious joy to friends and strangers alike.

That spirit came home with them to Boulder, where in 2004 they opened Frasca Food and Wine, with a mission to bring Friulian hospitality to Colorado.

Since, diners from all over the world — from regulars, locals and plenty of college students with their parents (with wallets in tow) — have made their way to the east end of Pearl Street to see what all the fuss is about.

“Our guests are really special,” said Sergei Kiefel, general manager. “They’re the ones who have supported the business for 21 years. When you look through the reservation system and see who’s coming in, you get excited seeing regulars who have been here dozens of times, celebrating milestones like anniversaries. It’s exciting to celebrate those moments with them.”

Just as exciting as a packed house Saturday night with 100 new guests, Kiefel said.

“We have 100 opportunities to make someone’s night really special,” Kiefel said. “And when you see so many first-time guests, it’s a chance to show them that a place like Frasca, something you might expect to only find in New York, is actually right here, within reach for people living in Colorado and Denver.”

At Frasca, no decision is too small to merit care, and no element of the dining experience is treated as an afterthought.

Kiefel, who started at the restaurant polishing stemware, said the magic lies in layering subtleties: the way the tablecloths are folded, the way the light hits the plate, the way a server connects with a first-time guest. These details, he said, coalesce into something quietly extraordinary.

“Most people don’t recognize tablecloths as part of service anymore,” he said, “but there’s a level of technique and craft to it. And when you get all those little things right, like the lighting, the ambiance, the way the food is presented … that’s what creates the full Frasca package.”

This “package,” as Kiefel describes it, is the difference between good and exceptional, between fine dining and something that sticks with you long after you finish slurping the dregs of sauce from the plate. While the restaurant’s precision is undeniable, what sets it apart is the warmth that underpins it: an openness and humility that flows from the top down.

The Frasca Hospitality Group operates several Front Range restaurants, including Boulder’s Pizzeria Alberico and Tavernetta and Sunday Vinyl, both in Denver. Each has its distinct style, but Frasca remains the flagship — the standard that sets the tone for everything that follows.

Despite overseeing six restaurants, Stuckey still shows up to work service, often resetting cutlery and greeting guests like it were his first night on the floor. He doesn’t pick and choose his shifts; rather, his team sends him a schedule every Friday, and he follows it like everyone else. One day might begin with business meetings and end with him pouring wine at Sunday Vinyl or checking in with diners at Frasca.

“I like being in the trenches with my teams,” Stuckey said. “That’s how I add value.”

Frasca isn’t the kind of place where servers memorize a script and recite it table to table. Though new hires go through serious training, they’re also encouraged to bring their personalities to the floor, to ask questions and to treat guests like human beings, not table numbers.“We all follow the same guidelines,” Kiefel said, “but people are allowed to be themselves. It’s not just mechanics here. It’s real hospitality.”

Many of the restaurant’s most experienced servers started in back-of-house roles, bussing tables or running food.

“Most people take a step back when they start here before they can move forward,” Kiefel said. “We hire for humility. You can’t fake warmth.”

That slow-build mentality reflects a belief that greatness comes from patience, trust and repetition, rather than flash or ego. According to Keifel, it’s what has helped Frasca retain a remarkably loyal team.

It’s not uncommon for people to grow up at the restaurant, moving through roles, building confidence and finding their rhythm inside a culture that rewards effort and consistency. In fact, Kiefel followed the same path himself. He joined the team in 2016 and quickly moved through every front-of-house role, going from glass polisher to front server in less than a year, then advanced into management before stepping into the position of general manager.

“There are nights when the team is an 11 out of 10,” he said. “And there are nights when the feedback is tough. But even after a hard night, you come in the next day and people are still motivated. They’re trying, and trying hard. You don’t see that everywhere.”

He added: “That culture has remained steady over the years. It’s built on a foundational belief that hospitality isn’t just about service. It’s more about care for the guest, for the team and for the process itself. At Frasca, there is no finish line. There is just tonight’s service, and then tomorrow’s.”

For Stuckey, this year’s nomination feels like a quiet validation that the restaurant is still doing exactly what it set out to do.

“We feel really humbled and honored,” Stuckey said. “The team feels like we’ve already won, no matter what happens on that Monday night in June. Being nominated, that’s the win.”

As for Kiefel, who’s never been at the helm for a Beard nomination before, the experience is both meaningful and motivating. He admits he’s hopeful, but he’s keeping the focus on what matters most: the work.

“I try not to get too excited,” Kiefel said. “Because if, say, Frasca doesn’t win, you just end up really bummed out. For me, it’s about making sure the

guest experience is great, every single day.”

Twenty-one years in, Frasca hasn’t strayed far from the idea that started it all: Get a little better every day. The restaurant may have picked up stars, medals and a mini-hospitality empire along the way, but the heartbeat of the place, the thing that keeps guests coming back and team members sticking around, is still the same.

If Stuckey could say one thing to his younger self, the one who opened Frasca 21 years ago with a handful of ideas and a lot of belief, it would be this:

“I think younger Bobby would look at where we are now and go, ‘oh my God, they’re doing what they said they were going to do,‘” Stuckey said. “The philosophy, the goal we were stating all those years ago was just to get a little bit better each day. And I think my younger self would be like, ‘yeah, buddy, you guys did it.’”