On Feb. 13 the semifinalists were announced for the 2009 James Beard Awards for chefs and restaurants. The nonprofit James Beard Foundation's mission is "To celebrate, preserve and nurture America's culinary heritage and diversity in order to elevate the appreciation of our culinary excellence," and its annual awards are considered to be the Oscars of the food world.

While Pittsburgh has consistently had a small presence on this list in the past, this year five local culinary professionals have been nominated for awards -- more than ever before: For outstanding restaurateur, Tom Baron of the big Burrito Restaurant Group; for best new restaurant, Richard Chen in East Liberty; for rising star chef, both Sonja Finn of Dinette in East Liberty and Dave Racicot of Lautrec at the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort; and for best chef Mid-Atlantic region, Douglas Dick of Bona Terra in Sharpsburg.

The semifinalists, 20 each in 19 categories, are culled from more than 15,000 nominations by an independent accounting firm. Five finalists in each category will be announced on March 23, and the winners will be named May 3 and 4.

No Pittsburgh-area restaurant or chef has ever been a finalist, and few expect this year to be different. After all, how many of the more than 400 judges are likely to have passed through Pittsburgh in 2008? They can't vote for restaurants where they haven't eaten.

This feeling that Pittsburgh simply isn't on the culinary map is frustrating to many food professionals and diners. Surveying other small cities that have gained major reputations in the past few years, such as Durham, N.C., and Kansas City, Mo., it's easy to imagine that all Pittsburgh needs is a little more external validation -- a James Beard award or two, a Zagat guide to call our own.

But that view neglects the important fact that thriving dining scenes must be constructed from the bottom up as much as from the top down.

The Zagat (pronounced za-GAT) restaurant guide got its start in 1979 as an unofficial survey of 100 of Tim and Nina Zagat's closest friends; today it's the world's best-selling restaurant guide series, and each year more than 350,000 people are surveyed about restaurants, nightspots, hotels, attractions and other leisure activities in more than 100 countries.

People have complained about Pittsburgh's lack of a Zagat guide for years. But a visit to zagat.com quickly shows that Pittsburghers haven't exactly been proving the city's worthiness.

Of the 1,469 Pittsburgh restaurants pulled from yellow-page listings, only 53 have been rated by users, and most of those have only a couple of reviews.

All it takes to write reviews is free registration. According to the Web site, "When [a user-added] restaurant receives enough member reviews, our editors will consider it for a Zagat Rating & Review." In other words, if hundreds of Pittsburgh restaurants were rated by a few dozen people each, we'd probably be a lot closer to getting a Zagat guide of our own, or at least we'd get included in Zagat surveys and be able to look at ratings online. Cleveland doesn't have a printed guide, but 42 Cleveland restaurants have Zagat ratings on the Web site.

And it's not just Zagat.com that's neglected by Pittsburghers. The Pennsylvania Chowhound board (chowhound.com) is completely dominated by discussions about Philadelphia. There is a small and dedicated group of Pittsburgh chowhounders, but for the most part they tend to answer the same question again and again: "I'm in from out of town, where should I go?"

Just this week Philadelphia-area chowhounders discussed topics as varied as women-owned restaurants (for Women's History Month), where to find unpasteurized apple cider and hot cider doughnuts; and shared discoveries such as "best spaghetti and sausage (or meatball) in West Chester for $6 or less," and "Assi Market food court is a real find!"

Where are the Pittsburgh food finds? When people ask about the best hamburger or the best breakfast or the most romantic restaurant, why does everyone give the same answer? We don't have Zagat ratings or James Beard plaques to draw diners into restaurant doors, but that makes it all the more important for diners to spread the word about their favorite restaurants.

Diners are the foundation of a culinary scene. Their knowledge, their palates and their demands ultimately drive change. If the Pittsburgh dining scene has one major flaw, it's that it's stagnant. Restaurants that last for years never feel the need to update menus, redesign dining rooms or continue training servers. After all, no one's complaining, right? But no one's really talking about these restaurants at all.

It's no coincidence that some of the restaurants honored by the James Beard Foundation are also the ones that have generated the most chatter, online, in print and in person, this year. And while they're unlikely to get the nod from James Beard, that doesn't mean we can't recognize their accomplishments.

Now it up to you, diners, to get Pittsburgh on the culinary map.