A new ‘world’s best’: Should anyone care?
Goodbye, Noma; hello, Geranium, said Adam Reiner in Bon Appétit. With the recent release of the latest World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, a new No. 1 has just been crowned—another exclusive refuge in Copenhagen that serves an ultra-seasonal Scandinavian tasting menu, this one priced at a “modest” $437 per person. So “here’s my proposal”: Instead of treating this is as big news, “let’s start treating the 50 Best List like food media’s rich out-of-touch uncle.” For the kind of guy who’s allowed to vote for the list, Asia and Africa barely exist, Europe is the center of the world, and $437 is “a small price to pay for the privilege of loading up his iPhone with fancy food porn to impress his jet-setting friends.” The 50 Best List is supposed to be the product of a comprehensive global search, but instead it’s “often a curated collection of dining opinions amassed by judges who went on some very flashy press trips.”
Ironically, “the list was intended to be something of an antidote to Michelin’s staid system of stars,” said Alan Sytsma in NYMag.com. Two decades after its launch, “it’s begun to feel as exclusionary as the tire guide it was meant to replace.” On some level, we all understand that the list is silly, more “cheerleading” than a serious critical enterprise. But given that the kitchens of the world’s elite restaurants are now being regularly exposed as workplaces that abuse their underpaid, overworked staffs, “it might be time to wonder whether these places really are the be-all and end-all of culinary excellence.” Surely, there’s a better model, one in which a luxury experience doesn’t “trump all other considerations.”