Restaurant Top 50 2004

[Andy Lynes]

The top ten are:

1 The French Laundry

2 The Fat Duck

3 El Bulli

4 L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon

5 Pierre Gagnaire

6 Guy Savoy

7 Nobu

8 Restaurant Gordon Ramsay

9 Michel Bras

10 Louis XV, Alain Ducasse

The Fat Duck won the European and New Entry awards. Other UK restaurants in the top 50 are St John (16); Le Gavroche (19); The Merchant House (21); The Ivy (24); Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons (30); River Cafe (41); and The Wolseley (49).

Bubbling under: Hibiscus, Lindsay house, Petrus and Pied a Terre.

This year, over 300 "experts worldwide (chefs, critics, restaurateurs,writers gourmets and so on)" were polled for their opinions. I think Gary Marshall and myself must come under the "and so on" catagory.

My own choices were (in no particular order)

Bibendum

Chez Bruce

Aux Lyonnaise

Putney Bridge

L'Atelier du Joel Robuchon

The ceremony was held at Sir Terence Conran's Royal Exchange in the city and was and absolute blast. The awards themselves were kept to well under an hour and were hosted by Sir Tel and Jeremy Bowen. Over 30 of the restaurants were represented in person with Thomas Keller accepting his award himself as he did past year. Heston Blumenthal was in attendance, along with Gordon Ramsay, Tetsuya Wakuda and Albert Adria. Gagnaire, Savoy, Robuchon and Ducasse were not.

[MobyP]

Andy -

where can we find the complete list? And do we know what Gary's 'Hot Picks' were?

Obviously it's a little anglocentric - were it French or Spanish (or possibly American), I'd be surprised to find eith Ramsey or L'Atelier or Nobu in the top ten.

[docsconz]

Which Nobu was that? My experience with Nobu in NYC was very underwhelming. I can't really argue with the others, although I imagine the order is very debatable.

[Andy Lynes]

The full list is in this weeks Restaurant magazine. I don't have time to type out the whole list today, but may be able to do it tomorrow.

It's Nobu London.

Anglo-centric - with 7 of the top 10 restaurants outside of the UK? I agree though that it would look different if it were an American list, all 50 would be US restaurants!

[Mrs Woman]

The full list is at Rest Mag's website, it's the top story

[MobyP]

I think in terms of world gastronomy, only the Fat Duck makes sense as an addition - in terms of its importance to cuisine. Guy Savoy is a bit of a surprise too. I would imagine him along with Ramsey in the second ten. Maybe. Nobu London is surely among the least significant of the chain. Wherever the man himself is cooking could probably be safely labled as having that kind of importance.

[Andy Lynes]

The full list is at Rest Mag's website, it's the top story

Thanks for the link, saves me a job. It wasn't up when I posted this morning, perhaps because Restaurant magazine weren't up when I posted this morning. It looked like they were set to party hard when I left them to get my train home.

[Andy Lynes]

I think in terms of world gastronomy, only the Fat Duck makes sense as an addition

I don't imagine anyone was really thinking in terms of world gastronomy when they selected their top 5 restaurants for this poll. Looking at the results, its a fairly arbitrary list, although the top 5 does seem to represent avant garde/"progressive" cooking quite well.

[bleachboy]

Why didn't Trio make the list at all, I wonder?

[Andy Lynes]

Flicking my eye down the list of people polled, the majority appear to be in the UK, and outside of eGullet, I'm not sure it has the sort of following that would get listed. But I'm sure there are numerous restaurants around the world that might be eligable as top 50 but do not feature in these particular awards.

[Suzi Edwards]

Why didn't Trio make the list at all, I wonder?

i think they need to get their publicity machine in order...it's a glaring omission IMHO.

[Jonathan Day]

I'm well aware of the constant pressure to rank and compare, and the almost visceral desire we have to know who is number 1, number 2 and so on. But the idea that one can rank restaurants of this calibre or declare that the French Laundry is in all respects "better" than Gagnaire or the Fat Duck "better" than el Bulli is simply absurd. Better for whom or for what? They would have been better served either by an alphabetical listing of the top fify or, if ranked prizes were absolutely needed, by grouping the top restauarants in 10s or 20s.

[marcus]

I think that we also had this discussion last year, but this remains a publicity exercise and the rating process does not even attempt a glimmer of a valid methodology. Who really believes that Atelier Joel Robuchon is the 4th best restaurant in the world? Why did you vote for it Andy, and the others that you selected as well? The real downside is that gullible people might make real dining decisions based on this list.

[oakapple]

The real downside is that gullible people might make real dining decisions based on this list.

There is not any serious danger of that. I mean, it's not as if someone's going to say, "Hmmm, shall it be El Bulli or L'Atelier tonight?" They're in different countries, almost a thousand miles apart.

Let's not wring our hands over the fact that there's no scientific way to identify the 50 best restaurants in the world. Heck, there's no scientific way to identify the 50 best restaurants in one city. We're not the only ones who've figured out that it's an impressionistic list. Readers will realize that you could have a meal to die for at just about any of these places.

[Andy Lynes]

I made my decision based upon where I had had the most enjoyable meals over the last year or so. I consider those restaurants to be the best at what they do. I haven't eaten in every 3 star in Europe, or every 4 star in America, its simply my experience. I beleive that Atelier is certainly one of the best restaurants in the world and if someone made a booking based on its place in the list they would have no grounds for complaint.

[marcus]

Let's not wring our hands over the fact that there's no scientific way to identify the 50 best restaurants in the world. Heck, there's no scientific way to identify the 50 best restaurants in one city. We're not the only ones who've figured out that it's an impressionistic list. Readers will realize that you could have a meal to die for at just about any of these places.

Is this not a cop out?? Where does it say that this is an impressionistic list?

Guides such as Michelin put significant time, effort and resources into doing the best that they can to identify and compare restaurants. They may not be perfect, but at least they're trying and not saying that because it can't be accomplished 100%, then it doesn't matter at all what they do, and anything goes.

Atelier Joel Robuchon received no stars from the 2004 Michelin and a middling 15/20 from Gault Millau. Michelin gives one or more stars to close to 100 restaurants in Paris alone.

[Jonathan Day]

I have a lot of sympathy with Marcus's point of view. It has to be more than an impressionistic list if it is to be useful.

My impression from Andy's report is that Restaurant Magazine used more of a Zagat-type poll -- conducted by highly professional raters, of course, but not based on a single point of view or framework about what "better" really meant. Nor did they require every rater to have visited all or most of the restaurants reported on.

Michelin and G-M work from a framework, and their raters compare judgements and strive for consistency. In some cases, they work from an agenda, as when G-M became an advocate of nouvelle cuisine.

I think it is useful to have a list of the top restaurants in any particular category -- in this case, I guess the implicit category was "haute cuisine", with some implications about price point, elaborateness of service, and degree of the kitchen's intervention with the products before they reached the table.

If what you wanted was perfectly cooked seafood, unadorned but fresh, with the simplest of service, I would be surprised if any of these 50 made the list. And I would struggle to place either category ("haute cuisine" or "perfect seafood") above the other; hence the notion of 50 absolutely "best" restaurants in the world is absurd. But this is a topic that has been debated extensively on these pages!

[SethG]

If anyone in the UK uses this list to decide where to eat in New York, they'll be pretty ill-served. Balthazar is the only out-and-out laughable choice of the restaurants selected, but even the other selections, while great restaurants, are out of date.

[dallardice]

Is this not a cop out?? Where does it say that this is an impressionistic list?

The magazine itself does point out that the people surveyed this year differed in part from the people surveyed last year, so movements up and down reflect differences in taste rather than necessarily an improvement/decrease in individual standards.

Which is not quite what you're looking for, but a step towards it.

[marcus]

Nor did they require every rater to have visited all or most of the restaurants reported on.

This is a very important point. This introduces a significant popularity factor into the ratings, all other things being equal, the restaurants that have been visited by more of the judges, will score higher. This causes a major systematic error in the results. This conceivably could have been compensated for by a normalization process where every judge listed the restaurants that they had and hadn't visited, and the scores of the less visited restaurants were appropriately increased. I see no indication that this was actually done.

[mongo_jones]

as meaningless and empty as such lists are...i am nonetheless pleased to see bukhara (at the maurya sheraton in delhi) on the list--it should be in the top 10; and its stable-mate dum pukht should be in the top 20.

edit to add: but nothing from japan, hong kong or china?

Edited April 21, 2004 by mongo_jones (log)

[Suzi Edwards]

i haven't thoroughly looked at the list yet, but i rememeber thinking last year that there was little change from the previous year. it strikes me that the top ten in things like this will change very little. i'd be more interested in a "best new restaurants" poll.

strikes me that those long established places are just more likely to come out on top as more people have eaten in them and they have better brand recognition.

[oakapple]

If anyone in the UK uses this list to decide where to eat in New York, they'll be pretty ill-served. Balthazar is the only out-and-out laughable choice of the restaurants selected, but even the other selections, while great restaurants, are out of date.

Ill-served, by what standard? Out-of-date, by what standard? Leaving aside Balthazar, which I must agree is laughable in the context, the other NYC restaurants mentioned are Gramercy Tavern, Daniel, Jean Georges, and Craft. There's nothing outrageous about those four restaurants. Extremely fine restaurants, one and all. Two of them are 4-star, and two 3-star, but the line between those two categories is very fuzzy indeed, as often noted here. All in all, New York is reasonably represented by these restaurants. Of course, you could make a good argument for others, but the only thing you can expect from such a list is that it is rational, and that standard has been met.

[SethG]

I didn't say any one of them (save Balthazar) is an outrageous choice. Far from it. Each one is a great restaurant, totally defensible. Taken as a group, however, they reflect nothing that's been going on in NYC dining in, say, the last five years, with the possible exception of Craft. This is in contrast to the UK choices, none of which I've visited but which seem to be intended to bear some relationship to developments in British dining.

[Matthew Grant]

and its stable-mate dum pukht should be in the top 20.

My boss called me something similar at work today