The James Beard Award 2026 winner, Heirloom Cities by Sri Bodanapu views metros through food, culture and heritage through the lens of legacy and inheritance

Fifteen years ago, Sri did something that, on paper, made no sense. She was a decade into a career in tech — including a stint at Facebook — living the version of success the Bay Area is built to manufacture. Then she turned 30 and walked away from it to study baking in Paris. "It felt like this existential crisis," she says now, laughing at the memory. "If not now, when?"

It's a decision that reads, in hindsight, like the first line of an origin story — because in a way, it was. That leap eventually led her home, then away again, then into publishing, and finally into founding Heirloom Cities: a design-led book series that treats regional Indian food not as a stereotype to package for a global audience, but as a living archive worth preserving with the same rigour — and reverence — as architecture or textile history. The debut title, on Mumbai, won a James Beard Award, the highest honour in American food publishing. A Kolkata edition is landing next, and a Dubai title is already underway for 2027. But the real story of Heirloom Cities doesn't start with Mumbai. It starts with a word document.

A family recipe book that started it all
For over four decades, Sri's uncle, a scientist living in the US, kept a quietly growing file of family recipes, passed along with one instruction: this is the family cookbook. "There doesn't need to be a reason to engage with food," Sri says. "It's not only about festivals. It's the easiest way to stay connected to where you're from."

Growing up Telugu in Hyderabad, that document became something closer to memory itself with the yearly ritual of avakai pachadi and the smell of a particular kitchen. "You don't have to dress a certain way or speak a certain language," she says. "Your everyday food can be your connection to culture." Years later, in a 30-day passion project, she turned those recipes into a self-published cookbook, Heritage of Food, the first thread of everything that followed. The instinct sharpened once she had children of her own, raising them Indian in America. "Unless parents deliberately seek it out, the culture doesn't come to them," she says. "I have to do the heavy lifting." Culture, for Sri, isn't simply some ceremony. It's a blend of music, textiles, and food. Her son doesn't need different clothes for school. He just needs a paratha in his lunchbox.

The gap nobody was filling
That instinct — to resist the single story — exposed something larger. "There's still a very strong stereotype around Asian, South Asian, Indian food," she says. "Even the New York Times pick, the Michelin star, the James Beard nod — the first thing you hear about is dosa, or crab curry. That's fine, a global audience only has so much capacity to absorb multiple cultures at once. But the gap is that it still sits in this butter-chicken, garlic-naan, dal, mango-lassi, samosa box. Full meal. Done."

The first gap was personal. After two decades abroad, Sri moved back to India for two years to be closer to family — and living somewhere, she found, tells you things visiting never will. "When you visit, it's all about going out and having fun," she says. "But when you live here, you realise there's so much regionality that isn't being shared with the rest of the world."

The second gap was structural, rooted in her own work. Years spent creating bespoke cookbooks for families preserving their culinary heritage had already put her at the intersection of food and design. But it was a visit to Sanatkada in Lucknow that sharpened the idea into a plan. "I saw these beautiful books on food history, but they were all very academic," she says. "That's when it clicked. There was space for something that wasn't a cookbook or a scholarly text, but a deeper form of storytelling." Heirloom Cities was built to live in that gap.

Why Mumbai?
The choice of Mumbai was both editorial and strategic. For Sri, the city's layered contradictions and history of migration made it the ideal starting point for the series. "Mumbai feels like such a great representation of the overall fabric of our country," she says. "There's the contradiction of abject poverty alongside fine dining. There's also an incredible mix of migrant communities, and that thread runs through all our books because migration has fundamentally shaped the way we eat."

Just as importantly, Mumbai was instantly recognisable. "As the first book in the series, we wanted a city that would capture people's attention," she says. "That also made it more challenging because it's been written about so beautifully already, but I felt very strongly that it had to be our first city."

If one place captured the heart of the project, Sri says, it was Worli Koliwada, home to Mumbai's original fishing community. "These are the city's earliest settlers, and they've shaped the way Mumbai eats," she says. "We went back for a second shoot, and seeing the entire ecosystem — the fishermen, the women sorting the day's catch, the everyday rhythm of life — reinforced why these communities had to be at the centre of the story." It's no surprise the seafood chapter is Sri's favourite. "I love the image on the back cover," she says. "Two fishermen stand with their nets against a backdrop of modern steel buildings, still dressed in their traditional clothes. It's a deeply human contrast. That chapter is about the true custodians of the city." The reporting drew equally on expertise and time in the field. Editor Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, whom Sri calls a "culinary chronicler," brought years of research and trusted relationships with Mumbai's communities. "She already had a relationship with Soumitra from the Pathare Prabhu community and with Morgan from the East Indian community in Uttan," says Sri. "We spent two days with Morgan learning about bottle masala — why it's made only once a year and the stories behind it."

The team also tested their ideas firsthand. Curious whether Mumbai had a defining indigenous sweet tradition, they visited bakeries, Irani cafés and newer establishments across the city. The research stretched beyond food too, informing the book's visual language through Bandra's colonial architecture, South Bombay's signage and its street life. That same instinct shaped the photography. Rather than staging scenes, Sri encouraged her photographer to observe quietly and let people tell their own stories, reserving styled shoots only for home kitchens. The approach came together most clearly in Sunday Masala, a chapter on the annual ritual of families making their own spice blends. "The city slows down on a Sunday, and people finally make their masala," says Sri. "No two blends are the same, and that's what ties the communities together."

What the James Beard Award actually proved
The James Beard Award, Sri says, validated something bigger than one book. "It proved these stories matter and that there's a global audience ready for them." It also proved the format: a slow, 300-page, design-led object could hold its own against digital and magazine storytelling built for speed. For Sri, it reflects a broader shift as the same recognition craftsmanship has recently found in Indian fashion, is now arriving for food.

Same process, different city
With Kolkata now in production, Sri says the approach stays the same, only the city changes. Research comes first, shaping a table of contents around each place's unique food culture. "In Mumbai, that meant the Koli community. In Kolkata, it's the city's Chinese heritage and its rich mishti tradition," she says. The challenge is finding fresh ways to tell familiar stories: "We're always looking for a new perspective while staying true to the city." Dubai, slated for March 2027, follows the same philosophy. A city Sri sees shaped less by luxury than by migration, trade and survival. "From Iranian and Lebanese breads to desert preservation techniques like fermenting fish or burying meat in the sand," she says, "these are histories people haven't heard."

"We don't want to sanitise these cities or simply create beautiful images. Every page should spark joy, curiosity and nostalgia. I want people to walk away knowing our cities have so much to offer — and to feel genuinely happy after reading the book."