where the chefs serve diced cow’s heart with marrowbone extracted ‘live’ at the table. Le Chateaubriand is a modern bistro that serves simple, almost austere combinations and sticks two fingers up at its high-end, hoity-toity neighbours. Neither has a single Michelin star. For detractors like Drew Smith, Faviken, which was new to the list in 2012, is evidence of the less-than-rigorous guidelines – how can a tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere be compared meaningfully with a big city brasserie doing 500 covers a day?
Whereas for Maureen Mills the same restaurant is brilliant evidence of the ground-breaking, unpretentious celebration of good food that is at the heart of 50 best. Stephen Harris, chef patron at Michelin-starred The Sportsman in Kent, is a UK panellist who has a fondness for the competition but is also realistic about its limitations. Stephen also cites the examples of Faviken and Le Chateaubriand; the first of which he thinks is a positive inclusion because of its very obscurity, the second he says is, “definitely not the best restaurant in Paris but certainly the most interesting.” But should a world’s 50 best restaurant competition rank a tiny bistro as the 15th best restaurant in the world – the second highest of any Paris restaurant – because it is “interesting”? First of all, according to Stephen, everyone should calm down a bit and take a sense of humour check.
“I just find it really funny how people get so caught up in whether it matters or not,” said Stephen. “I find it incredible that people get so worked up about something so simple.”
Media monster or harmless fun?
However Stephen Harris also admits that the light-hearted idea of the original competition may be a thing of the past. “It started off as a bit of fun in a magazine and everybody likes a list.” He said. “The trouble is, ten years down the road, to some people on the list it’s all or nothing, so what was an innocent piece of fun has now become vital to the industry; that side of it is a shame.” The heir to this empire of growing media attention and debate is the current editor of Restaurant magazine, William Drew. William seems by turns amazed and slightly apologetic about the immensity of the creation the magazine has spawned. “No one had any idea of the extent that it would grow,” he says, “or the kind of scrutiny it would come under, or the power and influence of the list, so in many ways it’s taken us by surprise.”
William admits that the system isn’t perfect but makes it clear that there is an on-going effort to tweak things and improve the process. However the lack of ‘rigour’ is something he embraces, pointing out that the non-elitist nature of the list is a direct result of the lack of restrictions on how the panellists vote. He is also dismissive of the criticisms of PR influence saying: “Of course there’s a PR influence on it. This is the modern world where there’s a PR influence on everything.” And what about those mutterings? William admits there have been isolated cases of judges doing “the odd thing they shouldn’t do” but says these have been immediately dealt with.
However, he says: “In terms of widespread problems that people have suggested, we’ve investigated and we have found no evidence to suggest that there is any kind of broad manipulation or abuse.” Internal investigations may not, it’s safe to say, be enough to silence the critics but are you ever going to silence critics, and is that even the point? That, it would seem is simply a matter of taste. Detractors see the competition as some kind of madcap creation of a genius inventor that got out of control; others see it as just another list – a harmless piece of entertainment. Everyone knows, after all, that lists are supposed to generate anger and disagreement – that’s half the fun.
The world’s 50 trendiest restaurants?
For Stephen Harris all the controversy – and those mutterings – could be silenced with the changing of one small word. “Calling it the World’s 50 Best Restaurants is probably the problem,” said Stephen. “If you call it something like the World’s 50 ‘Trendiest’ or ‘Coolest’ restaurants you’d probably be closer to the truth, and solve a lot of problems at the same time.” And that sounds like a down-to-earth piece of advice in an area of the industry that is currently flying high. Whether it is flying too high, and too close to the sun, is something which only time will tell.
