A Guide To The World's Best Fine Dining Restaurants

               

 


The top restaurant rating guides for world class restaurants below are all useful with each having their own pro's,  con's and uses.


Michelin Guide
The only known criteria on which they judge a restaurant are:

  •     Quality of the products
  •     Mastery of flavour and cooking techniques
  •     The "personality" of Chef in his cuisine
  •     Value for money
  •     Consistency between visits

Source: Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Guide


The most influential guide for world class restaurants and will affect a restaurant's revenues more than all other guides. It uses a 3 star rating system with 13 being in the USA and 25 in France (in 2016).


Issues

  • Michelin pidgeon holes 1000's of restaurants into 3 categories of stars or no stars. It is a very rough guide though there are so few 3 stars that these would all be considered world class. The 3 star range is too wide for most pro's.  Also, per Chef Marco Pierre White at the Boxtree Restaurant (the first 3 star Michelin restaurant in England) 'Michelin is only giving three stars so it can make headlines when it takes them away.
  • They have only reviewed a few regions in the USA. Not included are Las Vegas (Roubouchon),... It is incomplete compared to other rating guides. 
  •  The newest restaurants will not receive 3 stars for typically 2 years or more. While this does avoid fast burning stars that burn out quickly, many people would never the less like to have the option to know which restaurants are truly at this level at any given time.


Preferred Usage
A good starting place for travelers to find world class restaurants by region or big city.  Three star restaurants are  too varied in caliber though they do meet minimum standards. A good guide for knowing what are the top restaurants in the area but not for the 'pecking order'.


See bottom of page for rankings.



Gault Millau / Gayot Rating System
While most have heard of the Michelin guide which gives 3 stars to no stars, Gault Millau/Gayot rates restaurants on a scale of 1 to 20 with 20 being perfection which there is none. The points are awarded based only on the quality of the food.


This is the most accurate guide of all for me with the 20 point rating scale and is more purist approach by ranking only the quality of the food.


Gayot Ratings for the 90 US Markets and 20 countries:    

http://www.gayot.com/restaurants/ratings/main.html


Preferred Usage
The first and last place (Michelin is the second place) I look to find the latest rankings in almost every market in the USA and Europe.


See bottom of page for rankings.



World's Best Top 50 Restaurants
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-traveled 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 organizer 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.
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 skilfully 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 complaint, describing the top 50 list as a media-driven marketing operation.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/28/france-san-pellegrino-worlds-best-restaurants


My main issue with this guide is that it has 27 panels with the world divided into regions. Some votes that must be for restaurants in their own region. All civilizations and cuisines are not created equal. It further ranks every restaurant from 1 to 50 which no other top guide attempts to do which really reveals the flaws of regional weighting. At its core, the tabulating is skewed and flawed. The rankings reflect this to most top chefs. It should be called the  'Top 50 World Restaurants - Regionally Weighted'. Additionally over its history it has overly favored restaurants offering wildly outlandish of ingredients and styles trying to convey a new insightfulness - 'Best Experimental Chefs' would be another more suitable name for this list. Often these chefs are making important 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 (not quickly learned).

Preferred Usage
Very useful  for comparison outside of France, USA and England,...


Forbes/Mobil

A good, mostly accurate guide for cities in the USA and some other countries using a 5 star rating system. Gault Millau is more accurate.



Zagats
Ratings based on users versus pro's 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 for world class comparisons.