2005 Best Restaurants in the World

[vserna]

The List is a list of peoples FAVOURITE restaurants, not a list of restaurants with the best food.

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No. It says clearly 'BEST RESTAURANTS', not 'favorite restaurants'.

This is a fun list - meaning, basically, it's a total joke.

The jury is almost uniformly British. Thus St. John is the tenth best restaurant in the world.

Please!

Nice publicity coup for the parochial Restaurant magazine, I'll admit. Everyone and his mother, from The Guardian to this very thread, is discussing this parochial award as if it were the new worldwide culinary Bible.

[Andy Lynes]

In the introduction to the awards, the magazine says that it asked "chefs, restaurateurs, critics, writers and fun-loving gourmands to give us a list of their top five restaurants in the word" which is very ambiguous.

It also says that they've more then doubled the size of last year's panel of 300 "with more members than ever before coming from abroad." Around 300 or the 600 or names are then listed, but with no indication of where they are from. There are certainly a lot of British names on that list, but it also includes the likes of Bocuse, Neil Perry and Thomas Keller.

Getting a much more even geographical spread in the voting panel will help the credibility of these awards immensely, although as you point out, the media seem to be happy to take it at face value as it stands.

[vserna]

Bocuse, Neil Perry and Thomas Keller. 

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Universal indeed.

[estufarian]

I'd like to elevate the debate at this point by starting a competition to see who has eaten at the most "Best Restaurants". I'll start with 13 (in 3 countries). Any advance on 13?

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I'm not letting you get away that easily.

And you didn't specify 'in the last year', so my wallet can confirm that I've eaten at 18 in 6 countries - but I have to go back 15 years to do that.

And I'm surprised no-one commented on the huge 'fall from grace' by Daniel. Nowhere to be found this year! Maybe he should open in UK.

[Edited for memory lapses]

Edited May 2, 2005 by estufarian (log)

[jamiemaw]

I'd like to elevate the debate at this point by starting a competition to see who has eaten at the most "Best Restaurants". I'll start with 13 (in 3 countries). Any advance on 13?

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I’m afraid that this is exactly the problem, Andy. Few of the ‘judges’ if any have eaten in many more than a dozen of these restaurants in the past year—so how do they know that they’ve touched the ‘fifty best’.

Simply put, they don’t. All subjective awards programs are flawed; this one fatally so. It would be more appropriately titled ‘A Survey of Fifty of the Best Restaurants in Great Britain, parts of Europe and the Coasts of the United States with a look in on the Antipodes.’ In short, it’s culinary chauvinism at its most parochial--a mile wide, if that, and an inch deep.

Without belabouring how very hidebound it is, and what a plaintive yelp to sell more magazines, some of its more egregious faults:

• The list ignores four-fifths of the world’s population, including some outstanding culinary capitals and several sub-continents.

• Take just one city, say Chicago. Charlie Trotter places 14th yet there is no mention of TRU.

• In New York, Daniel Boulud fails any mention.

• The Wolseley, where many of the home team judges have dined in the past year, places, but a stellar, relaxed and modern three-macaron restaurant such as L’Arnsbourg does not. Further, even in London there are many other restaurants that would logically be placed well ahead of The Wolseley.

I'm sure you would agree that these types of awards--through a corrupted methodology--dilute the impact of more seriously organized and calibrated ones.

Further, although they can get away with it for a few years, sooner or later they will attract fewer column inches, even from unknowing general-interest periodicals.

The convenor has only one choice: Dramatically (I suspect by a minimum factor of five) expand the reach and depth of judges, and then perform the hard work involved in organizing teams of same in each country. Then call it what it is (see above).

Enough said.

Cheers,

Jamie

[Daniel]

This list has lost all credibility by putting Spice Market on their list.. I wouldnt even say its one of the top 30 restaurants in New York..

[Nick Soapdish]

does anyone have or know where to find top 50 lists from 2003 and prior? thanks

NS?)

[Matthew Grant]

I'd like to elevate the debate at this point by starting a competition to see who has eaten at the most "Best Restaurants". I'll start with 13 (in 3 countries). Any advance on 13?

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16 in 4 countries

[tanabutler]

I'd like to elevate the debate at this point by starting a competition to see who has eaten at the most "Best Restaurants". I'll start with 13 (in 3 countries). Any advance on 13?

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16 in 4 countries

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Matthew, come on over and I'll buy you champagne at Manresa.

[MT-Tarragon]

Apparently CNN Money has their own take on the survey.

The list is compiled from an international survey of chefs, restaurateurs and food journalists. And the No. 1 conclusion to draw from it might be that "haute cuisine" now means "wacky."

[Bux]

. . .  the No. 1 conclusion to draw from it might be that "haute cuisine" now means "wacky."

Just as there are those who will be drawn to the outrageous and the "whacky," there are even a greater number of people in our society who have the deep seated need to deride and mock the new, the creative and the avant garde in any field, be it art, music, architecture, fashion, science or gastronomy. Derision of the new and the different will always sell newspapers. Reverse snobbism is a sure fire means to popularity among the masses. It doesn't hurt at all that the kid of food Blumenthal and Adrià produce takes a high degree of discipline and talent purely at the production end and it therefore expensive.

It's all well to dismiss this food as being a fad for a minority. Great avant garde movements in art were put down in the same manner. No one really knows the future or what will catch on and what will fall by the wayside, but it's worth noting that these chefs are paid serious attention by young cooks and I'd suggest that's a greater indication of the effect they will have on restaurant cooking than what's said in media panering to low brow tastes and prejudices.

My number one conclusion is that ccn.com is not where I'm going to get news of the future. Has anyone noticed how long this list has been out in the public before it even hit the ccn.com site as news?

[Bux]

. . .  the No. 1 conclusion to draw from it might be that "haute cuisine" now means "wacky."

. . . .

My number one conclusion is that ccn.com is not where I'm going to get news of the future. Has anyone noticed how long this list has been out in the public before it even hit the ccn.com site as news?

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In all fairness to ccn.com, and maybe I should always read the article before commenting on the post about the article, Gordon Anderson, in the May 3, 2005 edition of his weekly column The Good Life, is clear that this is just one maagzine's international survey. Moreover, I'm not sure the quote listed above is a fair one to represent his views in a column that's meant to chronicle "products, people and trends in luxury consumer goods, travel, and fine food and drink."

To his credit, he concludes with the following far more respectful sentences:

. . . .

Whether pasta made out of Jell-o sounds exotic or just silly, there's plenty of method to the madness. Crowded dining rooms and reservations that take a year to get are proof.

So is the fact that these experiments are apparently thrilling to eat. Global adulation by fellow chefs underscores that -- and lands you on a list of the world's 50 Best Restaurants.