Best Restaurant in the World
Maz July 1st, 2010
In April S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list went live on the internet, and Noma in Copenhagen was named the world’s Number One. Next day they got 100,000 emailed enquiries. 822 jurors around the world nominate winners from their region — a jury made up of critics, chefs and industry people. Gourmet Traveller’s Pat Nourse heads up the jury for Australasia. He says that “I don’t think it’s a perfect system, it’s not without flaws, but I think it’s a pretty good-looking list.” Sydney’s Quay came in at 27 and received so many inquiries that their systems crashed.
Noma has more a ’neo naturalist’ approach to food so is this the new direction for food at our top restaurants? Some say the Pellegrino list favours “bistronomie” instead of technical excellence, but many believe it is an international yardstick for what’s happening in contemporary dining.
The new gastronomic centres are Spain and Scandinavia these days, rather than France. But this is all at the rather esoteric stratosphere of restaurant experiences – which is not for everybody. France’s “best” restaurant was No. 11 — Le Chateaubriand, a bistro and not a 3-Michelin starred establishment as you might expect. Is this all a reflection of new trends … or just fad and fashion?
Whatever … it keeps us all interested in what restaurants are up to, food, learning to cook and an extraordinary number of people glued to the box watching Masterchef.