Remington mezcaleria Clavel and local star chef Cindy Wolf are representing Baltimore on the list of semifinalists for this year’s “Oscars of the food world.”

The James Beard Foundation, which every year honors culinary professionals across the country through its annual awards, picked Clavel for its nationwide Outstanding Bar Program category. The W. 23rd Street taqueria, which specializes in cocktails made with mezcal, is among 20 bars across the country picked for the semifinal round.

Clavel, co-owned by Lane Harlan (W.C. Harlan, Fadensonnen) and chef Carlos Raba, posted on Facebook that its staff are “doing a collective happy dance over here,” and celebrated the bar staff’s innovation with cocktails, including making their own ingredients sans preservatives in the “lab”: “We do it all our way and we do it to raise each other to become the giants of hospitality and grit we know we are.”

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