A Guide To The World's Best Fine Dining Restaurants

Food, the essential element, should use the freshest and rarest ingredients and exacting, time-consuming preparations that you would not experience in lesser restaurants.

Rating Guides                           
Rating guides are most beneficial to understand the different quality levels as well as actually dining at the top restaurants in the world. The usual areas to consider when rating a restaurant's food are taste, presentation, and creativity. Any Gault Millau/Gayot ranking of 18 to 19 or Michelin 3-star will be close to perfect for dishes. Michelin only states that 2 stars represent excellent cooking and 3-stars for exceptional cooking. Gault Millau18 is considered excellent, and a 19 rating is exceptional. These ratings are very, very broad. A common question when using restaurant guides is what 'really' separates a 3 Michelin star from a 2-star or a Gault&Millau 18 from a 19? (see Chapter 3 Rating Guides for a more comprehensive review).

Skip's Ratings Using Gayot/Gault/Millau's 1-20 Ranking Scale  
Break down your restaurant visits by rating each dish you have ordered to make it easier to assign your own rating for the overall total score. My thresholds for rankings are:

17: Accomplished level of skill, taste, and flavor choices. Memorable food that is worth traveling for. The low end of 3 Michelin star restaurants and the high end of some 2 stars.

18:  World-class restaurant level - exciting and unforgettable. The ingredients blend smartly and follow the 'nature of materials'. This ranking is in the middle of a 3 Michelin-star restaurants. It is worth going out of my way to dine there.

19: Decidedly overwhelming, it induces euphoria and makes me giddy. I am relishing the experience long afterward. A couple of dishes could pose a new direction in modern cuisine. The best in the world-class that I plan trips just to dine there. The top of 3 Michelin star level quality.

19.5 Masterpiece-level dish that I very rarely have eaten. It is as close to perfection as humanly possible. Typically, only a top 10 restaurant in the world could do this for more than a couple of dishes and develop this quality level consistently over many years. It is in the top ten 3 Michelin-star level restaurants in the world.
                                                                              
The Intellectual Argument
At the Michelin 3-star and Gault&Millau/Gayot 18-19 level, it is primarily an intellectual argument about the restaurant's cuisine. A certain level of understanding is required to properly critique the top 25 restaurants in France and the top 10 in the United States. Cooking involves art and science that is not understood fully except by a few. Most do not understand 'they don't know what they don't know' when they arrive at this level. They might be able to see it is a top 25 restaurant but not necessarily have a full understanding as to why. It is analogous to a finished song which is also both art and science. Why is a song perfect? The chord design, the cleverness of melody n harmony, the audio engineering, which requires years of study and experience, instrumental orchestration, originality, etc. How many people know and understand these song-making ingredients like a professional producer/audio engineer? In cooking, it is about the conceptual brilliance regarding the choice of ingredients, preparation, and techniques, and finally, presentation by considering these questions:

  •  Was 'every' ingredient necessary?
  • Was this the best way to prepare these ingredients?
  • How smartly do the ingredients blend and follow the 'nature of materials'? This will involve the science of cooking and an understanding of the nature of materials to know what works.
  • Are the flavors intense or dull?
  • Is the complexity of the dish at or higher than the level of the restaurant overall?
  • How innovative are the ingredients and preparation?
  • Has the restaurant's cooking developed its own personal style in a unique way?
  • Does the chef have training in the world's very best fine-dining restaurants?
  • Have they created a few 'masterpiece' dishes that will stand the test of time?
  • Does the restaurant have a world's top chef moving modern cuisine forward in some way. Are they creating a new direction or path? Some superstar chef's in the past that exemplify this include Paul Bocuse who started making chef's superstars, Michel Guérard who started spa or healthier cuisine,  and Fernand Point who developed nouvelle cuisine and trained many of  France's top chefs.


Sourcing Importance
Start with only the absolute finest ingredients. There must be a passion for seeking out the best ingredients, working with local farmers, and shipping exceptional ingredients from all over the world. To give you an example, here are some ingredients used at my restaurant, Latour, from 40 years ago:

  •  Rungis International Market - Paris, France. Fresh fish and produce flown to Miami that included loup de mer, rouget barbet, baby turnips, Sengali french beans, wild baby strawberries, truffles in season and goose liver
  • Baby chickens from a farm outside San Francisco
  • Rouen breed ducks from a farm in Maryland
  • Amish fruit stand in Miami with exotic fruits of Florida- cavendish bananas, atemoya, starfruit,…
  • Goat cheese-13 types from a local French food store
  • Fresh heart of palm from a local farmer
  • Mesquite wood from Texas for hotter grilling and flavor
  • Fresh Sockeye and Coho Salmon from the Copper River in Alaska

40 years later, you can imagine the additional depths possible with 'farm to table' widely implemented, today's internet, and a much more connected world.

 Consistency Importance
The foods are consistently at the exact proper temperature. The presentation is the same day after day, the taste and flavors always 'pop,' and the ingredients are always of world-class quality.

Though most rating guides almost exclusively review only the food in their scoring, the other areas are also important to the make-up of a truly world-class restaurant experience. Your five senses are not just looking at and eating food during a fine dining experience. All your senses are bombarded if you are interested and paying attention. Determine from the list of elements in this chapter what your priorities are for each one and which should be in your decision-making when choosing the top restaurants you want to dine at next. You should decide your weighting factors for these priorities to determine the ideal top restaurants to dine at. For example, what weighting is important to you for food and menus versus decor? 80%/20%, or would you dine at any top restaurant regardless of decor, or is the decor a significant factor for you? The cost of a meal is important to many. Will it be $1000 to walk in the door per couple, or do they offer à la carte menus, a less expensive lunch, or dine in the bar area for much less?