The Best Restaurant in The World

And 4 Pseudo scandals to rake over

Welcome to The World’s 50 Best Awards 2025 in Turin, Italy

Another year goes by with the W50 Best Restaurants becoming bigger, louder and more influential than ever. This years list of 1-50 if it were presented in alphabetical order would get little pushback and be praised as an excellent list of modern (less stuffy) Fine Dining in mostly Metropolitan centers. Alphabetical would cause much less debate but also, would be much less exciting. However, it IS numerically ranked which makes the reveal more exciting but also causes all kinds of shouting about voting blocks and PR influence. This year will stir up as much debate as ever on many fronts including the announcement that Maido in at #1 pipped beloved Asador Etxebarri at the post:

“Scandal” #1 - Voting Blocs

In 2019, W50 Best announced that winners would go into a Hall of Fame and be ineligible to win again. Each year since, whoever was #2 the previous year became #1 the following year, therefore, this year Asador Etxebarri who was #2 in 2024 seemed destined to be #1 in 2025. In my History of W50 Best published last week - I predicted AE to win but also reported on rumors swirling around that the various Latin voting blocks had aligned behind Maido and, indeed, that seems to have occurred. At #5, Maido leapfrogged 4 slots to #1. As a consolation prize, Etxebarri’s beloved sommelier, Mohammad, won the world’s best sommelier.

There are 4 Latin America voting blocks with 160 voters while Spain and Portugal have one block with 40 voters. This would be irrelevant in alphabetical order as both restaurants are great! But add in numerical rankings? Let the shouting begin!

Scandal #2 - Junkets and Freebies

In last week’s W50 Best retrospective, I argued that freebies have little influence for traveling voters because free food is a small % of total travel costs and the restaurant will never know if you voted for them or not. Junkets are a different story. If you fly people to your restaurant - and you do it at scale - you will likely pick up votes from less frequent travelers who otherwise wouldn’t have that many international restaurants to choose from. There is a case study below the paywall about the biggest ever junket operation and it’s positive results. If you study the city list this year you can figure out who that was. All I have to say about that is that restaurant PR is everywhere - and just because someone or some group spent more $$$ on it than you did is just part of modern society. As all the restaurants involved are excellent…this again only really matters because the list is numbered and not alphabetical.

Scandal #3 - The demise of USA/Canada

USA/Canada peaked on the debut list in 2002 with 12 entries. From there the # of restaurants declined steadily until 2024 when the number sank to a rather humiliating 2 entries. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse - 2025 got announced and USA/Canada dropped to 1 entry with Atomix as Single Thread got bumped out of the top 50. Mexico is part of North America and had 2 entries with Rosetta and Quintonil - Mexico topped USA/Canada.

So - is this a scandal? well not really. Many people think the USA is the least exciting region for Fine Dining in the world. Here is what a global, fine dining society had to say about it:

1. USA is the least interesting of the the 4 major restaurant regions: 87%

2. USA restaurants are better than their rankings: 13%

So - bring on the North American awards in Las Vegas in September. It will be interesting to see which 50 the voters can dig up in a country struggling with Fine Dining. Go Orlando🤣?

Scandal #4 - The catered food at W50B events is always terrible

Guilty as charged.

Maido:

Below the paywall is the PR initiave and it’s results as mentioned above