Forbes

Founded by Mobil and Simon & Schuster in 1958, Forbes Travel Guide is the oldest travel guide in the United States. Ratings are given by anonymous paid staff members using stars (five-star, four-star, or recommended ratings) based on objective criteria.

Issues
It could be argued that their threshold is too low as they award five stars too frequently. In 2022, Forbes had (35) 5 stars in the United States, while Gayot has (13) restaurants rated 18 or 19, and Michelin has (13) 3-stars. They award all of Michelin's 3-stars and Gayot's 18 and 19's except for one each. They give 5 stars to as low as Gayot rated 14's.

Summary
A good, mostly accurate guide for cities in the United States that includes ratings for hotels and spas as well. Most useful for cities that Michelin does not review, especially those who prefer Michelin's ratings as opposed to Gayot (more accurate for the top restaurants).

Zagat

Collects and correlates the ratings of restaurants by diners. The guide's ratings are on a five-point scale, five being the highest and one being the lowest, with component ratings for defined areas, including food, decor, service, and estimated cost.

Summary
Ratings are based on users versus professionals, so the 'pecking order' is often very skewed, though accurate at mid-levels. Good for local rankings, especially for markets not covered by the other guides but not useful for world-class comparisons.

World's 50 Best Restaurants

The only 'non-guide' is included here due to its popularity.

Voting Method
The list is created from the votes of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, comprising 1,080 international restaurant industry experts, with a 50/50 gender balance. It is split into 27 separate regions around the world; each region has its own voting panel of 40 members including a chairperson to head it up. At least 25% of the panelists from each region change each year. The panel in each region is made up of food writers and critics, chefs, restaurateurs and well-travelled gourmets, each of whom has 10 votes. Some regions span more than one country. The decision as to how the world is divided up is left to the organiser and regional chairs and is debated and reassessed annually. The divisions are designed to represent the global restaurant scene at the current time as fairly as possible.

The Voting Rules
Academy members submit their choices in order of preference. Academy members must have eaten in the restaurants they nominate in the last 18 months – and are asked to confirm this fact for each of their nominations. There are no criteria that a restaurant has to meet. They do not need to have been open a certain number of years. This method means that restaurants cannot apply to be on the list, and cannot be nominated.

Source: The Voting System. (n.d.). The Worlds 50 Best. Retrieved from:
https://www.theworlds50best.com/voting/the-voting-system

Issues
Criticisms include from L'Express magazine's food critic, François-Régis Gaudry, said "In truth this spectacular promotion hides questionable methods," he wrote in an open letter to the list's organizers. Explaining that he would be "taking his leave" after five years on the jury, Gaudry said the methodology behind the voting was too lax."I have ... become convinced that your business ... is the result of a dubious operation skillfully disguised as an infallible measurement of global gastronomy," he wrote, adding that the "yo-yoing" of certain names up and down the list each year was proof that they were no more than a reflection of media fads. Périco Legassé, the food critic of Marianne magazine, added to the chorus of complaints, describing the top 50 list as a media-driven marketing operation.

Source: Davies, Liz. (2010). Sacré bleu! French rue absence from world's top 10 restaurants. Retrieved from:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/28/france-san-pellegrino-worlds-best-restaurants

My Main Issues With This Guide Are:
'What constitutes the ‘best’ is left to the judgment of food writers and critics, chefs, restaurateurs and well-traveled gourmets. There is no pre-determined check-list of criteria.
It has 27 panels, with the world divided into regions. Some votes must be for restaurants in their region. All civilizations and cuisines are not created equal. France, the United States, and Japan which represent 53% of all Michelin 3-stars in the world in 2021, are only 20% of the top 50 restaurants due to regional weighting,…. They ignore 66 of 76 Michelin 3-star restaurants. It further ranks every restaurant from 1 to 50, which no other top guide attempts to do, which reveals the flaws of regional weighting. Of Gault&Millau's top 10 in France with the coveted 19.5 rating, only one, Arpege at #31 is in the World's Top 50 list. At its core, the tabulating is skewed and flawed. The rankings reflect this to most top chefs. Historically, it has overly favored restaurants offering wildly outlandish ingredients and 'razzle dazzle' or flashy styles trying to convey a new insightfulness(on the bleeding edge). 'Best Experimental Chefs' would be another more appropriate name for this list. Often these chefs are making significant strides for the future of cooking but are overly exuberant and playing 'fast n loose' with the science of cooking...the nature of materials or more simply, what truly works with what. This makes them less deserving of the very highest ratings. See Gayot /Gault&Millau and Michelin ratings which bear this out to a point. At the very top, only the very top chefs and a some critics fully understand the difference. The list should be called the 'World's Top 50 Most Innovative Restaurants Using No Judging Criteria - Regionally Weighted'. 

The 2022 List

The list's flaws can be readily seen by looking at restaurants from France, whose highest rated restaurant is #31 Arpege and #22 Cosme for the United States - which has no Michelin stars nor rank. Additionally, the United States has four more restaurants than France's three in the list. When comparing this conclusion to Michelin and Gault&Millau/Gayot rankings, they are in almost complete disagreement. My preferred choice is to use professional guides that apply consistent standards and strictly adhere to rules for different rankings and that have been doing this for 50 years or more.

Summary - Preferred Usage
The best for knowing the most innovative chefs from year to year in a much more concise format than the guides. Very useful for finding the best restaurants outside of France and the United States, and other countries that Michelin and Gault&Millau do not cover for an alternative rating. I would never rely on it for determining the 'pecking order' of the world's top restaurants but having said that, the list does address the need to have a concise pecking order for the world's top restaurants that the guides lack.

Andy Haler's Restaurant Guide

He is a freelance food writer for various publications and the restaurant critic for Elite Traveler magazine. He has reviewed over 30 Michelin 3-stars in France, all 15 in the United States, and almost if not all 3-star restaurants in Europe and Asia. He has dined at every Michelin 3-star restaurant in the world in 2004, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016. Reviews are more extensive, particularly reviewing almost all the dishes he ate as opposed to other guides that safely only mention signature dishes usually to not 'date' their last review. He does not hold back from critiquing the food that other guides generally avoid. He uses a 1-20 rating scale similar to Gault&Millau but includes 20's where they do not. He uses the same scale to rate each dish. I consider his guide to be between a blog and a guide. But it is more like a guide having a shorter review with almost every 3-star in the world reviewed and rated. Unlike guides, though, he has a very extensive number of photos from each restaurant to get a better look at each restaurant's food and decor.

Issues
He has no team, so many reviews can be very old and 'static', particularly in the United States. Most Michelin 3-star reviews are 10 to 14 years old in New York City, 8 to 14 years old in Las Vegas, and 17 years for the French Laundry in the San Francisco area. For this reason, his ratings are not included in my charts for the United States. To be fair, the other guides may have years-old reviews, but they try to keep up with what rating they should give each restaurant regularly, with a few exceptions. However, one has to appreciate his transparency and honesty in putting exact dates with each review. Some guides would be embarrassed if they had to put the last date their review was updated. Please note that a few Michelin 3-stars in France are missing, including Le Pré Catelan in Paris, Louis XV in Monte Carlo, Alexandre Mazzia in Marseilles, and Christopher Coutanceau in La Rochelle.

Summary - Preferred Usage
Vastly better food reviews than other guides from a true expert and generally more accurate ratings (though dated for some restaurants) than other guides for Europe. The first place I go to for European rankings and for any of his food reviews that are some of the most accurate.

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