World’s Best Restaurants 2014: the top 50 in full

[kleenex]

World’s Best Restaurants 2014: the top 50 in full - Telegraph

 

[jennyema]

Been to 4 of them.

Hope to get to Alinea sometime soon.

 

[CraigC]

I call foul. There are no BBQ joints on that list!

 

[kleenex]

I call foul. There are no BBQ joints on that list!

BBQ!?!?!!??!!??!?


When you can get:

Salad of Violet and Chinese Artichokes with Hazelnuts, Cured Duck, Grapes and Foie Gras At the Ledbury....

Shrimp and ramson at Noma

Burn Morels at Alinea

Snail Porridge at The Fat Duck

Pork Belly, parsley pressed apples, wild rosemary infused honey, blue cheese cream, crackling At the Test Kitchen...

 

[Mad Cook]

World’s Best Restaurants 2014: the top 50 in full - Telegraph

The problem with lists like this is that the restaurants that often get on such a list tend to go rapidly down hill.

 

[jennyema]

The problem with lists like this is that the restaurants that often get on such a list tend to go rapidly down hill.

That is definitely not true for the places I am familiar with on that list.

A few examples: French Laundry, Alinea, LeBernadin, Joël Robuchon ....

They are on the list for a reason

 

[Mad Cook]

That is definitely not true for the places I am familiar with on that list.

A few examples: French Laundry, Alinea, LeBernadin, Joël Robuchon ....

They are on the list for a reason

Well, it was a generalisation. It isn't inevitable but it does happen and when the rot does set in it isn't always immediate.

Many years ago we used to spend a few days in Paris every year. When there we always frequented a small, family run restaurant as most restaurants in France were then. It was very popular with the locals but not much used by tourists. It was very basic, with a set menu of seasonal and beautifully cooked and presented food and very friendly and everyone sat at a long table and helped each other to food and wine (it would be quite trendy theses days. The staff were efficient and helpful and cared both about their jobs and about their customers and the food was out of this world.

And then one of the Sunday newspapers devoted their colour supplement to Paris - its museums, art galleries, shops, "the sights", the parks and the restaurants.

One of the restaurants it featured was "our" place. Photographs, write-ups about the food, interviews with the patron and customers, the whole nine yards.

About 8 months later we made our annual excursion to Paris and went to "our" restaurant for dinner on the first night. It was awful. The place was full of Brits complaining (and with good cause) and there were none of the old local clientele in evidence. It was scruffy, the staff run off their feet, slap-dash and rude, and the food was badly cooked and badly served and in any case comprised of poor quality ingredients and talk about expensive!

When we got back to our hotel and mentioned it to the desk clerk she said that if she had know where we were going she would have warned us off. The locals no longer used the restaurant because of its decline and she even knew of the article in the colour supplement and dated the decline from that.

It is a sad fact of life that some places get too full of themselves and begin to think they are more important than their customers and there has been more than one "top chef" in my own country who has found himself in a financial mess with a failed restaurant because he forgot where his income came from and who actually paid the bills.

 

[phinz]

Perhaps we can try Coi when we take the San Francisco trip my wife won in a charity auction. Round trip airfare, Tonga Room dinner, room for three nights at the Fairmont and a few other things as well.

 

[Dawgluver]

Perhaps we can try Coi when we take the San Francisco trip my wife won in a charity auction. Round trip airfare, Tonga Room dinner, room for three nights at the Fairmont and a few other things as well.

Whoa, Phinz! That sounds phantastic!

We do expect a full report, ya know.

 

[cave76]

They left off The Silver Dragon in Oakland CA!
I mean the 'old' Silver Dragon, not the new, glitzy one they opened across the street.

The old Silver Dragon where sometimes a guy (always Chinese) would come through the restaurant with a bucket of his freshly caught fish in it for the cooks to fix for him and his family. (There was only one way in or out --- probably not legal---- but I doubt if anything was 'legal' in the restaurant. I didn't ask!)

Henry, our waiter, would sit down at our table and tell jokes in his heavily accented English while taking our orders. It got so we would let him order for us from the menu that was a small mimeographed menu in Chinese; dishes that weren't on the English menu.

Only once did I not like what he ordered---- and that was a dish with fermented bean curd. No thanks!

Ah, memories. I doubt if any restaurant that serves Chinese (Cantonese) food can top it. BUT ambience? What ambience? Unless you consider a real restaurant with real people joustling you while you ate because the Silver Dragon was so popular that the line started near your elbow and went out onto the street 'ambiance'

 

[phinz]

Whoa, Phinz! That sounds phantastic!

We do expect a full report, ya know.

Definitely. We'll probably stay a week, moving to the Marriott Marquis after our three days at the Fairmont. That's a 15 minute walk from Mikkeller Bar in the Tenderloin and not far from 21st Amendment and Anchor Brewing. We will also be visiting Smuggler's Cove, where I hope to be able to make a dent in their rum list.