The 2012
edition of the World’s
50 Best Restaurants List was released at the end of April
(see www.theworlds50best.com/awards/1-50-winners/). The annual list was first published by the Restaurant
Magazine in the U.K. in 2002 and has since been expanded to 100 despite its
name.
There is no doubt that the restaurants on the
list are good. Noma (#1) deserves to be
congratulated for popularizing the foraged food trend. But one may argue whether these 100 restaurants
are really the best (I doubt), and whether their ranking makes sense (I doubt
that as well). Let me illustrate with a
few observations.
The U.S. has the most number of restaurants on
the list: 8 of the Best 50 and 14 of the Best 100. On the other hand, Japan has only two. This is curious given Japan has been awarded
more Michelin 3 stars than any other country in the world. So much is clear: the Best 50 List panelists and
the Michelin inspectors use different methodologies.
Another observation: Thomas Keller has two
restaurants on the list. His flagship,
The French Laundry, is ranked #43 while its sibling, Per Se in NYC, is #6. The two serve similar, if not identical,
dishes. They do have different ambience – Big Apple chic versus rustic wine country charm. Can that explain the huge difference in their
ranking?
The
Restaurant Magazine states that it has no hand in the making of the list. It just tallies up the entries of 837 panelists from around the
world. It further details the rules
which seem fair and objective. But the
Devil is in the details.
For 2012, the
world was divided up into 27 regions to “fairly represent the global restaurant
scene at the current time”. One
country, the U.S., has three of the 27 regions (that is 11%). That explains the high number of U.S.
restaurants on the list.
Asian
cuisines are heavily under-represented. Only
six of the Best 100 serves “Asian” food if one includes teppan-yaki, which is
an U.S. invention, and non-Asian operations.
The six are #28 Ryugin (Japanese, Tokyo), #39 Waku Ghin (teppan-yaki,
Singapore), #50 Nahm (Thai, Bangkok, Australian owner/chef), #84 Bukhara (Indian,
New Delhi), #93 Lung King Heen (Cantonese, Hong Kong) and #100 Hakkasan Mayfair
(Chinese, London, Abu Dhabi owner). In
his own words, David Chang’s #37 Momofuku Ssam Bar and #79 Momofuku Ko are not
Asian. China has six restaurants on the list, and five of them are western. Most likely this is because all but one of the 27 regional
chairpersons were westerners, and they influenced the make-up of their
panels..
Despite its built-in systemic bias, I enjoy reading the
list every year. It is fun to see who
has moved up, or down, or get dropped. Just
don’t take the list too seriously.
