Twenty-one new Oahu restaurants are in the running for the inaugural Hawaii Restaurant Association award for new restaurant of the year.

“We felt that it was a category that needed to be addressed,” said Gregg Fraser, HRA executive director.

The restaurant industry is the only industry in which businesses have a 50 percent mortality rate in the first year, he wrote on the HRA blog.

“Restaurant owners put a lot of time and effort into either expanding or transforming their dreams. We think that they deserve to be recognized,” he told TheBuzz.

Nominees were chosen from among restaurants that opened in 2016, based on innovation, fresh concepts, community involvement, customer service and quality of their culinary offerings.

Chinatown’s burgeoning restaurant scene yielded four nominees, versus 11 in Waikiki, four of those in the new International Market Place. Other nominees opened in Kakaako, Kailua, Kapolei and Honolulu.

Nominees were selected by a committee of HRA board members. The committee also will be tasked with choosing the winner, “which means they’ll have to do a lot of dining out in the next few days,” Fraser said.

The winner will be announced at a March 20 luncheon at the Kahala Hotel & Resort as part of HRA’s 2017 Employee Appreciation & Excellence Awards.

The annual ceremony honors front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house employees from among restaurant members and affiliates of the Hawaii Restaurant Association. More info: hawaiirestaurant.org.

These restaurants, opened in 2016, are up for the Hawaii Restaurant Association’s first new-restaurant award:

>> Chinatown: Encore Saloon, Fete, Palate Craft & Eatery, Senia

>> Piikoi Street: Bakery + Table

>> Kakaako: Moku Kitchen, Piggy Smalls

>> Kailua: Over Easy

>> Kapolei: Koa Cafe, Moena Cafe

>> Waikiki: 100 Sails Restaurant & Bar, BLT Market, Eating House 1849, Flour & Barley Brick Oven Pizza, Kona Coffee Purveyors, Mahina & Sun’s, Maui Brewing Co., Stripsteak, Sushi Sho, The Lanai, Wisp

Promoting Hawaii

So much Hawaii-related news has been coming out of the New York-based James Beard Foundation lately that some worthy items fell to the cutting room floor in past columns.

Among them, the Beard House, a sort of culinary mecca, is promoting a Maui adventure in late February via a Hawaii sweepstakes. Up for grabs is a four-night stay for two at the Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, including a dinner of the chef’s tasting menu at Ka‘ana Kitchen and an outrigger snorkel tour. The winner will need to provide airfare and ground transportation. Click here to enter.

The foundation also is accepting applications for its inaugural Women in Entrepreneur Leadership program, as a complement to its Women in Culinary Leadership program. Both seek to address gender imbalance in the culinary industry.

The deadline for the entrepreneur program is April 14, while the culinary leadership program deadline is March 12. For information and application forms, click here.

Send restaurant news and notes to erika@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4303. Follow Erika Engle on Twitter @eriKaengle.