Food celebrities from around the globe gathered in Paris tonight for the World Restaurant Awards’ inaugural event at the former stock exchange, Le Palais Brongniart in Paris.
Created to better reflect the world’s diversity of restaurants, the event was judged by an equally varied panel: from chefs, restaurateurs and journalists to consultants, creative directors – and even the global director of premium products and benefits at American Express.
In an interview last week, author and co-founder of the awards Joe Warwick told The Staff Canteen that he wanted the event to be like the Oscars of the food world, inspiring people to eat food they otherwise may not have heard about.
There was certainly an atmosphere of cultural refinement as the elites of the restaurant industry kissed each others’ cheeks while humble but no less talented award nominees stood awkwardly at the sight of cameras.
Awards were given to restaurants, not chefs, though for the most part, except for the drinks-focused awards, they still were there to receive the plate-trophies - which the evening’s host Antoine de Caunes told us were handmade in France and kept at exactly 50°C.
Representing the Restaurant of the Year, Wolfgat, also the winner of the ‘Off-Map Destination' was chef owner Kobus Van der Merwe.
Wolfgat, a 20-seat restaurant in a historic fisherman’s cottage in Paternoster on the west coast of South Africa, was named after the cave atop which it sits. Its seven course seasonal tasting menu, an ode to the local area's heritage serves mainly seafood, enhanced with indigenous pickings foraged along the shore line, like wild herbs and succulents, seaweed, and has a reputation for being affordable despite its quality.
Far from a solo achievement, said Van der Merwe, he and his team of six - mostly women, and none of which, other than himself, have any formal food training - “certainly didn’t feel worthy” when they were longlisted, and that to have come as far as they had was “an absolute honour,” let alone winning the evening's most prized award.
Tonight’s event was proof that it’s not all about out with the old, in with the new:
