Best Restaurants in the World

All this brouhaha about the Restaurant magazine's 50 Best Restaurants in the World makes me think of this delightful little piece I did for the (once cool) Gridskipper website a couple years back. It also gives me a little pause for thought. And lets me share my pearls of wisdom with you. As well as snagging a bit of this high internet traffic in the process.

Any kind of "best of" list deserves a little ridicule , because "best" is so obviously subjective in so many ways, and top tables performing at the absolute gastronomic stratosphere can be so vastly different in form, function, inspiration and in what crowd they draw. They can be hard to understand and alien. So when every newspaper and website from Helsinki to Hoboken is raving about the snail porridge and bacon and egg ice cream that they never tasted, it's easy to see why people go for these easy to swallow lists. That being said, none of the judges involved were actually required to prove they went to any of the restaurants they judged, nor was it deemed important by Restaurant Magazine when they went (ie in the last year).

Anyway, as a friend (and contest judge) told me when I got all prissy about the list , "Adrian, it's just a fun party with chefs". So I'll leave it at that.