Well, isn’t this a fun one. Food & Wine has opened its annual Best New Chefs celebration to include The People’s Best New Chef. Yup, it’s getting all social with it.

And here’s the kicker, we’ve got four locals in the running for the Midwest! I know! So it’s Erik Anderson of Sea Change, Landon Schoenefeld of HauteDish, and the duo of Winberg and Brown from Travail. That’s almost too much talent to handle, how on earth will this all shake out? Well there’s a bevy of others in the mix, notably some Missouri boys who are turning heads, so there’s the dreaded split-vote situation to consider.

So, you have to VOTE for your favorite and the editors of F&W implore you to vote only “for chefs whose restaurants you’ve actually visited, so the ‘chef’ part of The People’s Best New Chef 2011 really holds true.” It’ll be interesting to see how the People’s Choice is played against the final Editor’s Choice. Oh, I know how sticky a game THAT can be. It’s possible that we could end up with two reps from town . . . possible. In the past we’ve seen McKee, Woodman, and Bixby-Daugherty win the title, and I couldn’t be more excited for our evolving food scene as it is, whether we win a nod or not.

But just for the sake of competition, because we all like shiny medals, let’s get out and vote, hmmm? When I entered my choice, Carly Groben was a scant 2 percent ahead of Erik Anderson.