World's 50 Best Restaurants List Announced
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IN A topsy-turvy list loaded with upsets, Gaggan Anand's eponymous restaurant in Bangkok has tumbled from the 10th to the 23rd place among the World's 50 Best Restaurants, which were announced amid much fanfare and global media attention for the first time in New York on Monday night (local time) / Tuesday morning (IST).
And there's more bad news for Modern / Progressive Indian Cuisine. Indian Accent, India's No. 1, has slipped ten rungs from No. 77 to the No. 87 spot, making me wonder whether the global jury guiding the awards is losing interest in an emerging cooking tradition that has been getting international media exposure riding on the reputations of these two acclaimed restaurants.
In another portentous signal, although Gaggan was voted Asia's Best Restaurant for the second consecutive occasion in a separate round of awards earlier this year, the establishment that followed it at No. 2, Tokyo's Narisawa, got the Asia's Best stamp from the World's 50 Best jury. Narisawa, which has earned its formidable reputation by promoting the cuisine of the lesser-known Satoyama region, held on to its eighth position in the 2016 list.
Ironically, a few days back, in an interview with CNN's Talk Asia programme, Gaggan struck a philosophical note on awards and rankings, declaring: "With my rankings, awards and the fame ... I could raise the prices to double and still I would be sold out every night with the same food. Exactly the same food," he said. "But we won't do that because we want everyone to come here -- not just a certain class," he added. (Read the news report based on the interview at:http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/05/asia/gaggan-anand-talk-asia/)
Gaggan opened his second Bangkok restaurant, Meatlicious, late last year, moving away from molecular gastronomy to a comfort food menu featuring burgers, ceviche, quinoa salads and his favourite pasta dish.
From its precarious perch at No. 87, Indian Accent can take heart from the presence of well-regarded (and more established) restaurants such as Per Se, Daniel, The French Laundry, Zuma, Le Petite Maison and Momofuku Ko are also in the 51-100 line-up. And all of us who would love to see it rise to the ranks of the World's 50 Best can only keep our fingers crossed and pray that it doesn't make an exit like Bukhara (which opened its account in 2003 in the Top 50 and continued on the list for several years thereafter) and Indigo (which made it to the 51-100 list in 2007 and was never seen on it again).
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The 2016 list is topped by Osteria Francescana, the restaurant where Massimo Bottura reinvented Italian cuisine, at Modena in the gastronomically rich Emilia Romagna region. It has edged out Spain's El Celler de Can Roca, although the chef and co-owner, Joan Roca, of the restaurant based out of the working-class suburb of Taiala to the north-east of Barcelona, bagged the Chef's Choice Award 2016, based on voting by his peers from around the world.
El Celler de Can Roca finds itself at No. 2 (the position held by Osteria Francescana last year) and the restaurant, Copenhagen's Noma, it had edged out to become No. 1 for the first time in 2013, has dropped to No. 5, right after Eleven Madison Park, New York (No. 3) and Central, Lima (No. 4). The worst slide, though, has been that of Heston Blumenthal's London restaurant, Dinner, which slipped, as if on a banana peel, from No. 7 to No. 45.
Is the 2016 list, which keep experiencing a periodic itch (that too at intervals of less than seven years!), a signal of the new pecking order in global cuisine? Its critics insist that the Restaurant magazine, which manages the list with a global jury of more than 900 individuals, needs to keep causing upsets in the rankings to keep up the level of the worldwide excitement it is able to generate year after year. It is this excitement, after all, that keeps its sponsors happy.
Photo: Gaggan Anand at last year's BW Hotelier F&B Conclave in New Delhi.
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