{"id":1063,"date":"2015-06-03T10:39:15","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T10:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1063"},"modified":"2015-06-03T10:39:15","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T10:39:15","slug":"best-restaurant-in-the-world-says-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2015\/06\/best-restaurant-in-the-world-says-who.html","title":{"rendered":"Best restaurant in the world? Says who?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Something<\/a>

Something to eat at El Celler de Can Roca<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Would any critic dare to try to name the 50 best operas\/singers\/actors, artists in the world, except as some sort of perverse game? The concept of the World\u2019s 50 (or 100 or 1000) Best Restaurants is obviously a dodgy one. Who decides who\u2019s on the list? What qualifies them to judge the question? And are the procedures they use transparent? The list for 2015 has just been published. It contains the names of most of the usual suspects \u2013 El Celler de Can Roca in Girona (1st<\/sup>), Osteria Francescana, Modena (2nd<\/sup>), Noma, Copenhagen (3rd<\/sup>), Central, Lima (4th<\/sup>) Eleven Madison Park, NY (5th<\/sup>), Mugaritz, San Sebastian (6th<\/sup>). Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (7th<\/sup>)\u2026 I\u2019ve actually been to two or three of these. They were very good indeed. But the best<\/em> in the world? Says who?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nThere\u2019s the rub. This nonsense has been going on since 2002. Here\u2019s what I had to say about it in 2006, and it doesn\u2019t look as though much has changed:<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u201cIt’s disappointing, but I no longer receive weekly e-mail alerts from Restaurant<\/em> magazine (probably fallen victim to my new spam filter), so I was unable to participate in this year’s voting to choose the World’s Top 50 Restaurants.<\/p>\n

A pity, as I cast 20 or 30 votes last time – though I no longer remember when, or whom I voted for. I suspect I wasn’t the only person to vote early and often in 2005, because that year 14 of the “winning” restaurants were British.<\/p>\n

Though my fellow voters and I should probably be investigated by the Electoral Reform Agency, there have been improvements. I clearly recall not only that the initial list in 2002 maintained absurdly that more of the world’s top restaurants were in Britain than in France, but that some of the victors were so obscure that – dare I suggest it? – it is unlikely more than a single respondent had even been to some of them.\u201d<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

I remarked then that some electoral reforms were carried out in 2006, and that they seemed to have done their job, as the list was boringly predictable. However, even with the 20 regional panels, each with only five votes, and the provision that only two of those could go to restaurants within the judges\u2019 own region, the procedures were still opaque, and a prejudice in favour of \u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cmolecular gastronomy\u201d still apparent.<\/p>\n

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When writing about restaurants in The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, I told my editor that I refused to refer to Restaurant<\/em> Magazine\u2019s 50 Best ratings, simply because I did not wish to give them credibility. It\u2019s now 13 years since this very silly list began. It may well be less corrupt in 2015, but it\u2019s no less ridiculous.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Would any critic dare to try to name the 50 best operas\/singers\/actors, artists in the world, except as some sort of perverse game? The concept of the World\u2019s 50 (or 100 or 1000) Best Restaurants is obviously a dodgy one. Who decides who\u2019s on the list? What qualifies them to judge the question? And are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-h9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1063"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1067,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063\/revisions\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}