Maui Now’s Vanessa Wolf judges the Maui Onion Festival Recipe Contest. Maui Now file photo.

By David Kvasnicka

Maui Now has been nominated for a national award for food journalism by the Association of Food Journalists.

The AFJ selected Vanessa Wolf as one of three finalists in the ‘Best Restaurant Criticism’ category for her reviews of eating establishments on Maui.

The other two nominees are Alison Cook with The Houston Chronicle and Jill Silva with the The Kansas City Star newspapers.

“Oh my God. They must have only had three entries,” said Wolf with her characteristic wit in response to the nomination. (In fact, there were 272 total entries in 17 total categories.)

Previous years’ nominees for ‘Best Restaurant Criticism’ have included The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, LA Weekly, Seattle Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The full list of finalists is available here. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at the 2014 AFJ Annual Conference on Sept. 11 in Memphis, Tennessee.

A full list of winners will be made available on the AFJ website soon after the ceremony.

The AFJ awards are intended to recognize excellence in all aspects of food journalism: reporting, editing, layout, feature writing, column writing, restaurant criticism, specialty food writing (beer, wine and spirits; food policy and issues), special projects or series, essays, blogging, multimedia projects and food visuals.

The entrants represent a wide range of publications including newspapers, magazines, online sources and blogs.