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South China Morning Post
6 hours ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Maido in Peru tops World's 50 Best Restaurants list, Hong Kong's Wing, The Chairman place
For the 2025 edition of the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards, the annual event was held for the first time in Italy, at the historic Auditorium Giovanni Agnelli at the Lingotto Fiere exhibition centre in Turin. Maido, a Nikkei (Peruvian-Japanese) fine-dining spot in Lima helmed by chef Mitsuharu 'Micha' Tsumura, took home the top honour. The restaurant is no stranger to accolades from the 50 Best universe, having received top ranking four times on the Latin America edition of the list. 'I dream of making people happy,' said a visibly emotional Tsumura when taking to the stage. 'I think hospitality can do amazing things. They can make dreams come true, they can solve most problems that you think cannot be solved. I think that we should be an example for the world of what can be done and how we can bring things together with the power of food.' The winners of the 2025 edition of the World's 50 Best Restaurants celebrate in Turin, Italy. Photo: World's 50 Best Restaurants Coming in second once again was respected Basque restaurant Asador Etxebarri in Spain, which in 2024 was beaten to the top spot by Disfrutar in Barcelona Two Hong Kong restaurants – Wing (11th) and The Chairman (19th) – fared well, moving up a number of spots from their previous rankings. Ikoyi in London, helmed by Hong Kong-born chef Jeremy Chan, received the highest climber award, leaping from 42nd to 15th.
New York Times
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The World's 50 Best Restaurants Announces Its 2025 List
The 2025 recipients of the restaurant world's most influential global awards, the World's 50 Best list, were announced last night at a ceremony in Turin, Italy. Maido became the second restaurant in Lima, Peru, to reach the top spot. Asador Extebarri in the Basque region of Spain held onto its place at No. 2. Quintonil in Mexico City, DiverXO in Madrid, and Alchemist in Copenhagen filled out the top five. 'We talk a lot about sustainability of the environment, but we rarely talk about human sustainability,' said Mitsuhura Tsumura, Maido's chef, who has helped redefine the centuries-old Japanese-Peruvian culinary tradition for a modern fine-dining audience. 'I think this industry can be an example of how we can bring people together with the power of food.' Overall, the list continued to recognize restaurants outside of the European fine-dining tradition, with innovative presentations, experimental flavors and hyperlocal ingredients. The highest-ranking U.S. restaurant was Atomix, which reached No. 6 in 2024 but came in twelfth this year, fresh off winning a James Beard award for outstanding hospitality on Monday. U.S. restaurants on the 'extended' list of 100 included Single Thread in Healdsburg, Calif. (80), Le Bernardin (90) and César (98) in Manhattan (90) and Atelier Crenn in San Francisco (96). Cosme in New York and Smyth in Chicago fell off the list. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Wall Street Journal
These 4-Ingredient Crab Cakes Taste Like Summer Vacation
His Restaurants: Seabird and Zora's Market and Kitchen, both in Wilmington, N.C. What he's known for: Co-owning a locally focused fine-dining seafood restaurant with his wife, Lydia Clopton. Inventing fresh, playful dishes that celebrate the abundance of North Carolina's waters. A handful of ingredients is all it takes to make Dean Neff's crab cakes a winner. 'If you have excellent crab, you don't need fillers,' the chef said. He learned this lesson early, as a teenage cook in a seafood shack near Savannah, Ga.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Telegraph
Why this £685 train meal is better value than Avanti
The best train food I've had was cooked for me by Phil Howard on the Belmond British Pullman in May. Howard, of the Michelin-starred Elystan Street in Chelsea, was one of a series of guest chefs cooking on the train this year. You eat your meal in one of its ancient and beautifully decorated carriages while it trundles on a long loop through Kent: out through Lee, back through Sevenoaks. The food has to be good to make up for the fact that you start at London Victoria and end up at London Victoria. Luckily, it was. There was a terrine of Dover sole, skate and smoked eel, a poached egg with an asparagus velouté, roast saddle of lamb and a rum baba made with Sauternes for 170-odd diners, somehow conjured up in a couple of little on-board kitchens. We have been conditioned to think that food and drink on trains ought to be bad; there's no joke older than the British Rail sandwich. But why? Unlike on aircraft, where the cabin pressure ruins the palate, there is nothing to stop food on trains being as good as it is in a stationary restaurant. No rule says we must put up with the shuffling cart of doom, with its crisps and its unmentionable coffee. At £685 per person, the Belmond Pullman experience is not for the faint of wallet, but it provides a benchmark for other trains. In May last year, LNER quoted a passenger £786 for two standard return tickets from Newcastle to London, or £1,049 to travel in first class. There were no chefs working on board, Michelin-starred or otherwise. A report in December found that GWR was the most expensive rail company in Europe, out of the 27 analysed. Avanti was third, just behind Eurostar. I'm not saying every rail journey ought to include an on-board jazz band and end with port and cheese, but the levels of comfort and service were an unfortunate reminder of how uncivilised most rail travel in Britain has become. The conversation around rail travel tends largely to focus on speed, reliability and price – most obviously in the cost of HS2 being framed as helping passengers get from London to Birmingham 20 minutes faster. But the strength of the opposition to the project implies that not everyone believes that getting to Birmingham 20 minutes faster is especially desirable. Instead, train companies should consider taking a leaf out of the Belmond book and think harder about comfort. Make the train nice and nobody will mind being late. You don't need a saddle of lamb, but a decent cup of coffee should not be beyond the wit of Avanti, nor a fresh sandwich or two. Wi-Fi, of course. A phone, Wi-Fi, a flat white and a comfortable chair: nobody could wish for more. You would hope the train got to Birmingham 20 minutes more slowly. The second-best train meal I've had was paprika chicken on the spectacular Berlin-Budapest route, which takes in four countries, mountains and rivers. It was served in the dining car – less luxurious than the Pullman but perfectly nice. The train was a minute late; understandable after a 12-hour journey, although the conductor still apologised profusely for the inconvenience. I believe the whole thing cost me about €30. Improving food and drink on railways isn't mere Epicureanism. It makes sound corporate sense. Anyone who has appeased a toddler with a biscuit knows that people will forgive almost anything for a delicious treat. And no business needs more forgiveness than British railway providers.
Globe and Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Mocktails catch up to their booze-filled counterparts on restaurant menus
Six guests enjoy a languid dinner in a charming circa-1600s building in Quebec City. Here, at the two-Michelin-starred restaurant Tanière³, small plates of venison tartare with smoked potato chips are served with a cocktail called Bog and Labrador. Most of the guests get the drink made with Canadian Club, homemade Labrador tea liqueur, L'Arme Secrète vermouth and a hint of blueberry. But one guest receives the same drink, instead made from non-alcoholic HP Juniper whisky and NOA red vermouth, Labrador tea syrup and blueberry. It's one of the most generous acts of hospitality I've ever seen. Up until a few years ago, non-drinkers were made to feel other than, especially at high-end restaurants where the wine cards were often snatched from the table with a sniff. Yet here, all guests were seamlessly included. With the low- and non-alcoholic sector now a US$13-billion global industry (with Canadians among its top consumers), restaurants around the world are embracing booze-free diners, proving that fine dining needn't be limited to fine wines. Flexing creativity with their non-alcoholic beverages, the alcohol-free, one-Michelin-starred restaurant Idam in Doha serves a persimmon, melon and espresso mocktail smoked with star anise, to go with a vanilla ice cream and pecan dessert. At the three-Michelin-starred Geranium in Copenhagen, there's a drink made from green apples, fennel and sweet woodruff from the garden. At Hisa Franko in Kobarid, Slovenia, chef Ana Ros's three-Michelin-starred restaurant makes Pine Booch: Fermented with natural sugars from the local Pituralka pear, the drink boasts a unique balsamic flavour that comes from pine needles harvested from the forests behind the restaurant. And Andrea Carlson's one-Michelin-starred Burdock & Co in Vancouver just announced their latest tasting menu with non-alcoholic pairings, including a fig and rhubarb koji (a type of mould on rice used in fermentation) cocktail served with a Hokkaido scallop crudo with fresh begonia flowers. 'Restaurants that don't have a comprehensive non-alcohol program are now leaving money on the table,' says Kurtis Kolt, a Vancouver-based wine consultant. 'You can't put the genie back in the bottle.' Kolt is the founder of Free Spirit project, which hosts booze-free pop-ups and events such as non-alcoholic wine, beer and cocktail tastings featuring dozens of vendors. He says the question he is asked most often at his events is, 'Why doesn't Gen Z drink?' No alcohol, no problem: Four zero-proof cocktail recipes to try at home There are plenty of reasons why a growing number of people of all generations are drinking less or not at all. Industry research shows that millennials and Gen Z consumers are looking for even more alcohol-free alternatives, driven by factors such as diet, legal cannabis consumption, cost and awareness around alcohol's impact on overall health. 'Plus, they grew up in a time when taking care of yourself is more a part of the zeitgeist,' says Kolt. While seemingly simple, making a restaurant-worthy mocktail isn't easy. 'Our mocktails are like liquid food,' says chef Moeen Abuzaid of Toronto's Arbequina, who along with his wife and co-owner, Asma Syed, decided not to serve alcohol at the Roncesvalles neighbourhood restaurant, to align with their Muslim values. Instead, they thoughtfully create drinks to pair with their elevated Arabic cuisine (think: freshly baked za'atar buns with house labneh, and Muhammara steak tartare). For their Lychee Pink cocktail, for example, making the base alone is a three-day process. They peel fresh lychees then infuse them with a strawberry consommé they've made by cooking down fresh berries and straining them. They then vacuum seal the juice with the lychees, along with organic agave syrup and toasted pink peppercorns, letting the mixture steep. Finally they filter it before shaking it up with white cranberry juice. Abuzaid says the cocktail goes particularly well with the likewise bold flavours of their Angus short ribs, which are cooked down with cinnamon, coriander, chili, date molasses and tamarind. 'When your mocktails change, the flavours of your food changes,' says chef Abuzaid. Other mocktails on the menu range from the Peach Blossom (white peach, sumac, orange blossom) to the Red Ruby (grapefruit, thyme, rose, hibiscus). There are also sodas such as Salaam Cola and de-alcoholized wines. For me, tucking into plates of the chef's savoury manti and chicken shish while drinking a simple pomegranate lime mocktail tasted just right, the spritzy freshness of the drink allowing the aromatics to shine. 'One of our challenges is getting guests comfortable with the idea of having mocktails to start the meal then moving on to de-alcoholized wine,' says Abuzaid. 'You can have a group that has no idea what wine even tastes like, and we're exposing them to a whole new world.' Others don't need convincing. 'Just yesterday we had a guest who drinks regular wine but was so excited to try the de-alcoholized wine that he drank an entire bottle of our Chilean chardonnay.' Arbequina's cocktails run from $13 to $16, though at most restaurants non-alcoholic cocktails often cost the same as standard cocktails (around $20). That's because many of the fresh bases and zero-alcohol 'liquors' are often as expensive as those found in traditional cocktails. For instance, at the LCBO a 700 ml bottle of Seedlip Grove Non-Alcoholic Spirit costs $45. 'We've definitely seen a steady and noticeable increase in demand for non-alcoholic cocktails over the past three years,' says Joey Simons, CEO of the Montreal-based restaurant group estiatorio Milos, which has 13 restaurants around the globe from Athens to Singapore. 'While there has always been a need to cater to different preferences – due to personal taste, pregnancy or health concerns – we started to see a more pronounced uptick around 2021 after the pandemic.' He says non-alcoholic options are no longer a niche request: 'It's now a key part of our beverage program.' Simons says a good restaurant should offer the full spectrum of preferences without compromising on quality or experience. 'We've made a conscious investment in our non-alcoholic program, both in terms of ingredients and empowering our bartenders to be creative.' They use the same obsessively sourced ingredients found on all Milos menus, such as honey from Kythira, Greece, and fresh citrus blossoms. 'We'd estimate that about 10 to 15 per cent of guests will opt for a non-alcoholic option at some point during their dining experience,' he says. 'Some remain entirely non-alcoholic throughout their visit, while others may start with a zero-proof cocktail before transitioning to wine or spirits with dinner. The proof of concept is absolutely there.'
