Why Don’t the World’s 50 Best Restaurants All Have 3 Michelin Stars?
About a month ago in Las Vegas, many of the most important figures in the restaurant world gathered for a four-day extravaganza full of lavish hors d’oeuvres and endless glasses of champagne to celebrate the release of The World’s 50 Best Restaurant rankings. On the 3rd day, Disfrutar, a Barcelona restaurant helmed by 3 alumni of the legendary El Bullí was crowned the champions of the restaurant world.
Restaurant rankings such as The World’s 50 Best matter. A lot. In an industry where marketing and promotion come as an afterthought to the effort and attention focused on food and service, these lists provide a massive reputation boost to restaurants that can alter the trajectory of a business. Perhaps the only other organization that can affect a restaurant more than The World’s 50 Best list comes from none other than a tire company.
The Michelin Guide was created in 1900 by the Michelin brothers to get French people to drive long distances. They devised a rating system with the hopes that a trustworthy guide would convince customers to unwittingly wear out their tires and thus have to buy new ones. It is as follows:
1 star: High-quality cooking, worth a stop
2 stars: Excellent cooking, worth a detour
3 stars: Exceptional cooking, worth a special journey
While this may seem like a fairly simple way to assess restaurants, confusingly coming from a company that has nothing to do with food, the criteria are stiff. Since its inception, the Michelin Guide has grown into the end all be all of the restaurant industry, having destroyed, businesses, careers, and quite literally lives. Michelin doesn’t rank restaurants in order from best to worst, it just hands out tiered ratings.
It’s not unreasonable to expect that the highest-ranking restaurants on The World’s 50 Best list would all score 3 stars in the Michelin Guide, but fascinatingly, the rankings that were just released do not translate with each other. Yes, the new champion Disfrutar possesses 3 Michelin stars, but discrepancies begin to appear immediately after. The second place restaurant, Asador Etxebarri, has only one star.
There are several reasons why these attempts to qualify restaurants do not agree, and they all come down to the differences in the voting and assessment processes. The most straightforward is that The World’s 50 best list encompasses, as the name suggests, the whole world. The Michelin Guide only operates in select areas.
Despite impressive expansion efforts in recent years, the rigorous standards and espionage-like secrecy with which the Michelin Guide imposes on itself makes it impossible to cover the whole globe, although that is ultimately their goal. Just over 25 inspectors are responsible for the colossal task of handing out stars to restaurants deemed worthy, of which there are close to 3,000. Inspectors come from tenured backgrounds in food and hospitality, and face taste tests about the quality of food and the nuances of flavors from different cultures. Michelin does their best to ensure their anonymity, but has acknowledged the growing difficulty to do so as technology advances. The guide emphasizes that these standards that they operate by ensure the highest level of consistency possible.
The World’s 50 Best is an independently run organization born out of the UK magazine Restaurant in 2002, that prides itself on being the first list to take on the whole entire planet. This is an obviously daunting task, and the way they pull it off is a little harder to understand. On their website it is explained that “over 1080 judges from 27 different regions put forth between 6 and 10 restaurants depending on their ability to travel internationally; a maximum of 6 restaurants can be located in the voter’s home region… in order of preference.” This might prevent the list from having the level of consistency that Michelin aspires to, but it is amazing for restaurants in countries that don’t enjoy the benefits of a visit from the Michelin Guide. For example, Central, in Lima, Peru, starless due to geography, was voted best in the world in 2023. The most recent World’s 50 Best rankings feature restaurants from South Africa, Chile, Peru, and Australia, putting them on the map for gastronomers who otherwise might not have known about them. Worldwide inclusion is an amazing benefit of this voting process, but at the end of the day the list is essentially a massive poll, and that should be kept in mind.
Regardless, by far the most important difference between these two culinary juggernauts lies in the criteria that inspectors/voters are instructed to rely upon. The World’s 50 Best voters pick their restaurants based on overall experience, factoring in service, atmosphere, and price. Michelin claims (to much skepticism) that their rankings are solely based on the quality of food in five specific criteria: the quality of ingredients; the mastery of cooking and culinary techniques; the harmony of flavors; the personality of the cuisine as expressed in the dishes; and consistency, both across the entire menu and between visits. Every restaurant is re-evaluated each year.
This is vital to understanding why one-star Asador Etxebarri, considered by many to be the best grill in the world, is ranked higher than many three-star restaurants on the list. The food is simple. Everything is grilled over fire, and ingredients are of the highest quality but often served in ways close to their original and true form. For this reason it likely doesn’t display the “culinary techniques” Michelin deems worthy of a higher rating, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that dining in the pristine Basque Country, and eating food from a chef who’s dedicated his life to finding the best ways to cook over flames, provides for an irreplicable experience.
Additionally, in 2021, the World’s 50 Best list announced that previous winners would become ineligible for future rankings. Their jerseys essentially hang in the rafters so that a different restaurant can win each year, preventing dominant runs from restaurants like Noma and El Bullí who each earned the top spot 5 different times. This decision says a lot about how the ethos of The World’s 50 Best and Michelin guide differ. The Michelin guide attempts to establish a consistent bar for restaurants to strive for. The World’s 50 best aims to recognize the most outstanding restaurants at the present moment.
After eating at several restaurants that hold both Michelin Stars and a spot on The World’s 50 Best list, these differences become evident. The food at Zén, in Singapore, was technical beyond belief. The best ingredients from all around the world are flown in (at an honestly alarming rate, T Swift would be proud) so that lamb from France and rockfish from Japan and peas from Spain could end up on the plate. At Nusara, in Bangkok, a newer restaurant at the forefront of a current boom in Thai fine dining, the food wasn’t as technical. But, it told a story, was far more exciting, and guests get to enjoy an unbeatable view of the Grand Palace as they dine. It’s a truly remarkable venue. Both had incredible and heartwarming service, but Nusara was a fraction of the price of Zén. Based on the established criteria, it is not shocking that Zén, the restaurant that was ingredient and technique driven earned 3 Michelin stars, while Nusara earned none. Nor is it shocking that Nusara, a dining experience that would be impossible to replicate, placed 74th on The World’s 50 Best while Zén was absent.
So, if you are fortunate to live in a country with representation from both guides (sorry Aussies), and the time comes when you are looking to fork out an exorbitant amount of money for a truly unforgettable meal, which list should you trust? Trust Michelin for consistency in the quality of food, but The World’s 50 Best for a more exciting dining experience that represents the culinary trends of the present moment. Both are great to use as a means of discovery, but neither is perfect.
The Lamb Dish at Zén, with ingredients from all over the world (it was really F*cking good)
The Signature Crab Curry at Nusara (it was also really F*cking good)
