A deeper dive into the Top 50 restaurants in the world

A deeper dive into the Top 50 restaurants in the world
By Steve Cavendish

After the world's Top 50 restaurants list came out on Monday and ranked Alinea at No. 6, we started looking at the group for trends and a couple of things jumped out. So we talked to some smart people who sat on a couple of Restaurant Magazine's regional panels and had a vote on the rankings. Here's what we found:

TRENDS

– Of the top 10, you can charitably say that modernists dominate the list. And that may be a reason why Spain has three in this group and France only has one. It would have one more if El Bulli hadn't taken itself out of the running (more on that below).

– What's the difference between No. 1 and No. 15? Not much. These are restaurants that have been ranked highly for several years. Only three were new to the top 15 this year. The Fat Duck, for instance, has never been out of the top five.

– Of the top 50, more than 70 percent are in Europe. The U.S. dropped from having 8 to 6, with French Laundry and wd~50 falling into the second 50.

– Of the top 100, the U.S. has the most (15) followed by France (13) and the U.K. (10). Because a third of the voters change every year, the list in general and bottom 50 in particular are subject to fluctuations.

 If you're betting on the Beard awards (and frankly, what big Vegas casino ISN'T offering odds on chefs, restaurants and food awards these days), you'd have to say that Eleven Madison Park's rocket ride up from 50 to 24 is an indication of where it currently sits in the zeitgeist. They're up for Outstanding Restaurant and will likely win.

– If the top of the top 50 is dominated by modernism, square at the bottom -- at No. 50 -- sits Etxebarri, the yin to the higher ranked yang. Everything in this Basque grill is done over an open flame using charcoal made on premises every day. They select the right wood like you or I would select the right pot or pan. It makes for an interesting bookend.

– Etxebarri is in the top 50 because El Bulli isn't. The Catalan temple to molecular gastronomy, a perennial contender for the No. 1 spot, pulled itself from the list because it's closing later this year. It's unfortunate that a ranking of the best of 2010 doesn't include one of the actual best restaurants of 2010. The omission strikes a discordant note for the list. (Jay Raynor in the Guardian had an excellent pieceon this.)

Chef Rene Redzepi stands in the dining room of his No.1-ranked restaurant Noma.

Q&A

We talked with Chicago-based food writer Michael Nagrant, Midwest chairman Steve Dolinsky (of Chicago's ABC-7) and Los Angeles-based food writer Simon Majumdar, about a few issues with the list. They all had votes. Here's what they said:

Steve, you actually ate at Noma last year. What was it like? Is it the best restaurant in the world?

Dolinsky: Noma was really mindblowing, and not just the $600 tab for the two of us. You got a sense that you were eating from the Danish countryside – everything came from within miles of the restaurant – and it really gave you a sense of place. I've never been to El Bulli, and not sure I would be up for a four-hour lesson in molecular gastronomy, but the food at Noma was just creative without being esoteric or precious.

Do lists like these favor any particular kind of restaurant?

Nagrant: It's hard to say without knowing the exact makeup of the voting population. However, looking at the fact that 32 of the best restaurants are from Europe, well, that might suggest there are a lot of European judges. Of course it might suggest that Europe is genuinely the center of great food in the world.

The list probably favors those who've placed well on it in the past. Most of the voters have limited resources. I’m willing to bet few, if any of them, have eaten at all of the top 50 in the last two years.  So when allocating resources on where to dine, I'm sure more judges ate at Noma last year than in previous years because they were curious about it having placed No. 1 the prior year. As a result, Noma probably gets a lot of votes because of prior list exposure.

Likewise, zeitgeist and reputation certainly play a role. Momfuku Ssam might not even be David Chang's best restaurant. I ate there last week. It's very good, however, in terms of service and level and quality of food, it's almost exactly the Asian version of Avec (which was built three years earlier), right down to the architectural layout and stools (which by the way were a little chipped at Momo and very much rejuvenated at the post-fire redo of Avec). It's absurd that Ssam makes it and Avec isn't even in the conversation.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm someone who likes to eat and wants to build a trip around a meal or three. Should I skip The French Laundry because it's 50 places lower than it was a few years ago?

Dolinsky: I still think you should hit the French Laundry.  I mean Momofuku Ssam dropped about 15 places, but that's still a must-visit place. Don't put so much emphasis on the numbers. Every region has 10 new chefs they bring in every year, that's 270 new voters each year, and I'm just not sure that means the quality of a certain restaurant has slipped that much. It might just mean those voters haven't had a chance to get there.

Nagrant: Nah. I mean I've eaten Grant Achatz's food side by side with Keller's food in the last three years and it's a fools errand to split the quality of the two. In fact, really it's all philosophical.  Do you want someone who's perfect every time who never fails on the plate publicly (Keller), or do you want someone who's perfect 99% of the time who's willing to fail once in a while because he'll learn the thing that will blow a diners mind the next time around (Achatz)?  

Achatz is rewarded now for his creativity and his relative newness on the scene, but in another 15 years, Achatz will probably be regarded as boring in favor of a chef who feeds people via microchip -- but truly, deeply, that will be about human hunger for what's new rather than some absolute truth about relative quality.

What did you think about El Bulli being left out?

Nagrant: Well, supposedly Adria agreed to be left out.  It sounds like a typical bad corporate decision. Someone probably said, "Hey everyone knows El Bulli is awesome.  There's nothing gained by having it in our list when it closes in a year.  Wouldn't it be better to save a spot for some hungry newcomer that will generate more excitement?"  What people forgot in making what seems like a harmless promotional decision is that most normal people won't care about the facts or understand the internal machinations to get there. Most people will look at the list and be like, WTF, where is El Bulli?  I think that hurts the list to some extent.

Dolinsky: I think the El Bulli issue is unfortunate, but the Academy (and El Bulli) decided it would be best to be left off, since it's closing this summer for good. It's just not fair to the other restaurants that are out there pushing hard every day, all year long.

Are there any US or Chicago restaurants that you think should have been on there but didn't make it?

Dolinsky: Still can't believe Avec isn't on there somewhere; same goes for Topolobampo and Spiaggia. I was also a little surprised not to see Jean Georges in the top 50, and as the Regional Chair for Mid-USA/Canada, I can't believe there isn't a top 100 from Canada -- I had at least a third of our judges this year from Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

Nagrant: Well, L20, under Gras certainly had an argument. L20 is to Le Bernadin what Alinea is to Per Se in some respects. It's a more modern creative execution of high level seafood that exists maybe nowhere else in the world.

Simon, you've written extensively about the London dining scene and now L.A. How is it that in the second largest city in the country, there's only one restaurant (The Bazaar by Jose Andres) that makes the cut and it's near the bottom (No. 85)?

Majumdar: I think the first thing to acknowledge is that the rankings are only among a plethora of awards, and that these awards are only one guide to what makes a city a world-class eating  city.  This was my first year voting for the awards and, while they are certainly fascinating, there is no denying that the votes of a limited number of judges can provide quirky and often controversial results. 

So, from that perspective, the absence of more than one L.A. restaurant is no indication of its true place in the rankings of great food cities. Nor indeed, is the fact that London has many more any indication of its rightful place.

That being said and based on my three years of visiting and one year-plus of living here, if I was asked to call L.A. a world-class eating city, I could not, hand on heart do so.

With the exception of the astonishing ethnic cuisine in L.A. (particularly Korean food, which I found to be comparable in quality to much of what I experienced on a trip to South Korea last year) the majority of the meals i have experienced in L.A. restaurants leave me considerably underwhelmed.

That is not to say that I have not had some excellent meals here, including at The Bazaar, which was listed in the SP awards.  But there is little depth of excellence and much of the dining scene seems to be driven by what I call "The hype and the herd." The food on the whole rarely lives up to the Twitter-driven hyperbole.  It is little surprise to me that L.A. is at the center of the two big food crazes of the moment, the pop-up restaurant and the gourmet food truck.  These are all too often less about how good the food is and more how the food is served and the joys of being part of the experience (getting a seat at the hot pop-up or locating the latest truck's lunchtime location).

As for London, its dining scene has improved out of all proportion, but still has a long way to go before it challenges NYC or any of the other truly great dining cities of the world.

Tribune reporter Kevin Pang and restaurant critic Phil Vettel voted as part of the Midwest panel for Restaurant Magazine's list of the top restaurants in the world.