After more than a decade as Williamsburg’s cool-kid natural wine bar with celebrity credentials, The Four Horsemen has been named a finalist for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant, a selection which seems both obvious and yet overdue.
This is only the latest accolade for the Brooklyn establishment, which was co-founded by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, his wife Christina Topsøe, entrepreneur Randy Moon, and wine director Justin Chearno in the summer of 2015. In 2022, Four Horsemen took home the James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine Program, vindicating the bar’s pioneering efforts to put natural wine on the map and the menu. (This particular recognition was a crowning jewel for Justin Chearno, whose influence on natural wine in New York was enormous and whose death in 2024 still hangs over the place with poignancy.) And in 2019, Four Horseman earned a Michelin star, which it’s held onto for over five years.
The latest James Beard nomination in the category of Outstanding Restaurant recognizes the relevance, impact, and commitment to quality of Four Horseman, which has evolved from a compact, reservation-hunting wine destination into one of Brooklyn’s defining restaurants. Under chef Nick Curtola, who has been onboard since the beginning, the food at Four Horseman has evolved far beyond “great bar snacks” into something precise, seasonal, and deeply coveted. Managing director Amanda McMillan and GM Stephanie Mercier Voyer are part of the crew that has made Four Horsemen a shaping force in Williamsburg’s dining culture while shepherding low-intervention wine through its evolution from niche obsession to full aesthetic world.
The Four Horsemen founders famously came in without conventional restaurant resumes, but their instincts in music, fashion, food, and nightlife have shaped the restaurant’s personality from the start—instincts which are again being recognized on the national stage. Winners for the 2026 James Beard Awards will be announced June 15 in Chicago, and in the meantime the team behind the Four Horsemen will be busy running their new Italian restaurant, I Cavallini, which opened in Williamsburg last summer.
