Besalu chef finalist for national award

Everyone raves about Café Besalu pastries. “It is like catnip; it goes right to my brain and makes me feel giddy and unreasonably unhappy,” writes Peggy Sturdivant in her blog, At Large in Ballard. Well, Besalu’s pastry chef James Miller is now a semifinalist for a James Beard award as the best pastry chef in America. (What’s a James Beard award? It’s the “culinary version of the Oscars,” expains the Seattle Times). “I feel like saying to anyone who ever doubted my word, I told you he was as good as a trip to France for croissants,” writes Sturdivant.