At least two Lawrence chefs have thrown their hats (or toques, if you will) into the ring for next year’s James Beard Awards, it appears.

If you like Hank Charcuterie and/or Limestone Pizza on Facebook, you may have noticed the restaurants’ recent campaigning for their respective chefs/owners Vaughn Good and Rick Martin.

What does this mean? Well, for the uninitiated, the James Beard Awards are basically the Oscars of the culinary world. As far as how the whole nomination process works, here’s a little breakdown. (Trust me, this is much more for my benefit than yours, as I spent a good half hour just to get the basic steps down.)

Anyone can submit a chef or restaurant for consideration in the awards’ national open call, which will remain open throughout December. From there, Restaurant and Chef Awards committee made up of approximately 20 food critics and other dining bigwigs narrow the ballot down to about as many semifinalists in each category.

Right now, Hank Charcuterie and Limestone Pizza, simply put, are trying to garner as many entries in the Best Chef Midwest category as possible, explains Just Food interim executive director Elizabeth Keever, who has a hand in Martin’s campaign. A high number of entries don’t guarantee a semifinalist spot, but the buzz generated certainly helps.

That ballot of semifinalists is distributed online to a voting body of more than 300 previous James Beard Restaurant and Chef Award winners; 250 panelists divided evenly among 10 regions; and 17 members of the Restaurant and Chef Award subcommittee.

Confused yet? Hang in there.

The resulting votes are tabulated, and the five semifinalists with the highest number of votes become the nominees. Semifinalists are announced in February, nominees in March and winners in May.

Just food for thought: the James Beard Foundation received more than 35,000 votes in the 2015 Restaurant and Chef category.

If you’d like to show some support for Good, Martin, and/or another local chef, visit jamesbeard.org to nominate them. Know of any other local chefs campaigning for the award? Let us know.