Restaurant Magazine and S. Pellegrino have announced the World’s Fifty Best Restaurants for 2008, a who’s who of the culinary world but are they the best or just the most famous? Did any Academy voting panel consider the simple joy of a neighbourhood restaurant that produces great local food? Probably not, and that is a great pity because for most of us dining at just one of the Fifty Best Restaurants is unlikely to occur more than once in a lifetime.
The Number One choice (three consecutive years) is El Bulli, the innovative home of Ferran Adrià whose approach to culinary excellence is inspirational for foodies like me. However, his favourite restaurant is a small one man seafood place that only cooks the best, freshest seafood and does not open if the markets produced an inferior catch that day. Maybe it deserves consideration for this honour? To that end, I nominate the following restaurants for our consideration to be one of the Fifty World’s Best Restaurants in 2009:
- Banana Leaf Apollo – Singapore
- Salumi – Seattle
- Robert et Louise – Paris
- Soho Spice – London
- Yarrow Bay Grill – Kirkland (Washington, USA)