Justine MacNeil, pastry chef and co-owner of Fiore, is in the national spotlight tonight as a finalist for the James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Pastry Chef award. The nod has turned the tiny Frankford Avenue bakery she runs with her husband, Ed Crochet, into a hometown hero, especially for the regulars who queue up early for cornetti and maritozzi and now get to say their neighborhood favorite is competing on one of food’s biggest stages.
Fiore’s nod on the national stage
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, MacNeil is a finalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef at the 2026 James Beard Awards, with winners set to be announced tonight in Chicago. The paper detailed the bakery’s surprisingly hefty output for such a small shop, including about 400 bomboloni, more than 300 cornetti and roughly 225 maritozzi each week, and quoted restaurateur Greg Vernick, who called her cornetti “the closest you’ll get to what they have in Italy.”
From New York kitchens to Frankford Avenue
Before Fiore, MacNeil trained at New York’s International Culinary Center and worked in some serious kitchens, including Tom Colicchio’s Craft and the Michelin-starred Del Posto. Eater Philly covered Fiore’s 2019 debut in Queen Village, where it first opened as a full-service restaurant. Fiore now lists its home base as 2413 Frankford Avenue, a cozier 20-seat daytime café where the couple relaunched the business in 2023.
What she bakes
MacNeil’s pastry case is built around regional Italian pasticceria rather than viral social media creations, with many items requiring long, methodical preparation. The Inquirer described Fiore’s compact kitchen as a kind of pastry lab, where recipes are tested and reworked repeatedly before they earn a spot in the case, and noted that some of the baked goods are assembled over several days.
Local stakes and tonight’s ceremony
MacNeil is one of seven Philadelphia chefs and restaurants named James Beard finalists this year, a tally that local outlets have pointed to as evidence of the city’s growing national clout. PhillyVoice spotlighted the full slate of Philly nominees, while the awards ceremony itself, scheduled for Monday at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, is set to be livestreamed, according to Choose Chicago. Whatever the outcome, Fiore’s pastry case will be open as usual tomorrow morning, and neighbors say they will be following the results with coffee in hand.
