It’s awards season—can you feel it? Adding to the mix is the 50 Best organization, which announced its 2023 list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants at a ceremony in Valencia, Spain on June 20. The controversial but revered awards take on the enormous (and potentially impossible?) task of naming the best restaurants in the entire world. This year, Central in Lima, Peru took the coveted top spot, replacing the Copenhagen restaurant Geranium, which was 2022’s winner.
Central and Barcelona’s genre-bending Disfrutar had a nerve-wracking night, as the restaurants—which ranked second and third on 2022’s list, respectively—waited to find out which would be named the very best restaurant in the world. Ultimately, Central took the biggest title of the evening. The restaurant is helmed by partners Virgilio Martínez and Pía León and features a modern Peruvian menu that takes diners through the country’s highest and lowest altitudes.
Still, it was not a bad night for Disfrutar, which is ranked the best restaurant in Europe. At number 10 on this year’s list, Table by Bruno Verjus in Paris became the highest new entry to the rankings. New York’s fine dining Korean restaurant Atomix, which was last year ranked 33, jumped a whopping 25 spots. At number eight, it is this year’s highest-ranked restaurant in North America. It’s been a very good year for the team behind Atomix, who just a few weeks ago won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: New York State.
Geranium was absent from this year’s list. That’s because, in 2019, the organization announced a new rule that no winners of the top spot would be eligible to place on the list in the following years. It’s a rule change meant to shake up the often-stagnant top slots. The move means that 50 Best darling Noma—which will soon close its doors for regular service—is also absent from this year’s list.
When it comes to how this global list gets put together, well, it’s a bit hard to say. The voting body is made up of 1080 voters across 27 regions, each of whom selects 10 restaurants as their “bests,” according to the organization. The organization says the voters are balanced in gender and comprised of approximately one third chefs and restaurateurs, one third food writers, and one third “well-traveled gourmets.” But critics have long raised eyebrows—50 Best doesn’t have a strict code of conduct, and voters are reportedly treated to free trips that could skew the results in favor of cities with well-financed tourism boards.
The list has also faced consistent criticism over the years for its Western-centric focus and for underrepresenting female chefs and an array of cuisines. Last year, only one honoree, the “neoteric Japanese African restaurant” Fyn in Cape Town, hailed from the continent of Africa. This year’s list did not feature a single restaurant located in Africa or India.
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