Will Noma get a fifth win at this year's World's 50 Best Restaurants?
On Monday night, the gastronomic elite will gather in London to hear a group pronounce the best restaurant in the world.
After snagging the title four times, this year chef René Redzepi of Noma restaurant in Copenhagen will learn whether or not he’s achieved the same mythical status as his mentor and culinary legend Ferran Adria, whose now-shuttered Spanish restaurant elBulli was ranked the top dining destination at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards a record five times.
Since first launching in 2002, the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards, organized by the UK-based "Restaurant" magazine, has ranked the world’s top chefs and addresses into a tidy hierarchal list, as voted by hundreds of international critics, chefs and food experts.
But over the years, as the ranking has grown into an influential, career-catapulting reference guide for chefs and restaurants around the world, the list has attracted no shortage of controversy and criticism.
This month, for instance, a trio of angry foodspotters in France launched an online petition, Occupy50Best, in protest of an event they call “opaque, sexist and priggishly self-pleasing.”
Among their list of grievances are charges that the ranking has given top honors to restaurants that have poisoned their customers (outbreaks of norovirus at Noma and The Fat Duck, also a former winner, sickened their guests in recent years).
The list has also been criticized for playing favorites to the same circuit of chefs -- a fraternity of names like Redzepi, Alex Atala, the Roca brothers, and Massimo Bottura who are reshuffled in rotation every year.
The awards have also rubbed some of the biggest names in gastronomy the wrong way by omitting Michelin-starred industry titans, or placing them behind young, unstarred chefs.
In the aim of bringing more transparency to the decision process -- which has been lambasted for giving ranked chefs voting power -- for the first time this year, organizers have hired Deloitte to count the votes and authenticate the results.
Despite the controversy, it can’t be denied that a placement on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list is good -- very good -- for business, ensuring worldwide exposure, media attention, full dining rooms and wait lists that stretch up to months in advance.
If the event were to be compared to the Michelin guide, the red bible of gastronomy, it could be said that while the World’s 50 Best aims to capture the zeitgeist of current culinary trends -- including décor, atmosphere and service -- the Michelin guide is purely a measure of a restaurant’s food offerings.
Before the results of the 2015 World’s 50 Best Restaurants are announced Monday night, here’s a look at the top 10 restaurants from 2014:
1. Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark
2. El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain
3. Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italyµ
4. Eleven Madison Park, New York, USA
5. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, London, England
6. Mugaritz, San Sebastian, Spain
7. D.O.M., Sao Paulo, Brazil
8. Arzak, San Sebastian, Spain
9. Alinea, Chicago, USA
10. The Ledbury, London, England
