The best restaurant in the world has only 12 tables.
Osteria Francescana, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Modena, Italy — with tasting menu dishes that range from "The crunchy part of the lasagna" to suckling pig — tops the The World's 50 Best Restaurants list for 2018. (It also won in 2016.)
The new ranking, released Tuesday, includes restaurants from 23 countries around the world.
Massimo Bottura’s restaurant Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy has been named the world’s best restaurant at the 2018 World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards.
Bottura’s three-Michelin-starred establishment was followed in second place by El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, and by Mirazu in Menton, France, in third place.
Peruvian and Spanish restaurants were also well-represented in the top 10, with Central in Lima ranked sixth and Maido in Lima ranked seventh. The highest UK restaurant was The Clove Club, in 33rd place, while last year’s number one, Eleven Madison Park in New York, was knocked down to fourth spot.
The event, which was held this year at Palacio Euskalduna in Bilbao, Spain,...
Italian chef Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana has been named the best restaurant in the world, at the annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards. At a ceremony in Bilbao on Monday night, the restaurant, which opened in Modena in 1995, was awarded the top spot for the second time – it also came first in 2016.
Last year’s best restaurant, Eleven Madison Park in New York, fell to fourth place after it closed for renovations for four months last year. In second place, chef Joan Roca’s El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, climbed one place from last year, as did Mauro Colagreco’s Mirazur restaurant in Menton, France, which moved from 4 in 2017 to third in 2018. Gaggan in Bangkok, which was 7th last year came in at number 5.
There were three Spanish restaurants in the top 10 this year (El Celler de can Roca, Mugaritz in Errenteria, and Asador Etxebarri in Axpe) and two from Lima, in Peru: Central and Maido.
The highest new entry award went to Disfrutar (which means “enjoy”) in Barcelona. Set up by three former El Bulli chefs, it came in at number 18, while the highest climber was Den, in Tokyo, which jumped from number 45 in 2017 to 17 this year.
There were no Irish restaurants on the list, although four UK entries (all London-based) made the top 50; The Clove Club, Lyle’s, The Ledbury and Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner, in Knightsbridge, which fell nine places from 36 in 2017 to 45 this year.
Bottura holds three Michelin stars at his restaurant, in Modena, Italy, where dishes famously come with quirky names, including “Oops, I Dropped the Lemon Tart” and “An eel swimming up the Po River”. A 10-course tasting menu starts at €250, while à la carte starters come in at €70 to €90.
The restaurant has found fame outside the food world, appearing in Aziz Ansari’s Netflix comedy Master of None and in season one of Chef’s Table.
Accepting his award, Bottura told the audience of chefs in Bilbao “I’m going to use these spotlights for all of us to show the world that chefs in 2018 are much more than the sum of their recipes. We can have a very loud voice of change if we stay together.”
Rene Redzepi’s Noma – which was named best in the world in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014 – and which reopened as “Noma 2.0” earlier this year wasn’t on the list as it didn’t open in time for voting.
Here is a complete list of the world’s 50 best restaurants:
1. Osteria Francescana (Modena, Italy) Chef: Massimo Bottura. Last year’s rank: 2
2. El Celler de Can Roca (Girona, Spain) Chef: Joan Roca Last year’s rank: 3
3. Mirazur (Menton, France) Chef: Mauro Colagreco. Last year’s rank: 4
4. Eleven Madison Park (New York City) Chef: Daniel Humm. Last year’s rank: 1
5. Gaggan (Bangkok, Thailand) Chef: Gaggan Anand. Last year’s rank: 7
6. Central (Lima, Peru)
7. Maido (Lima, Peru)
8. L’Arpege (Paris, France)
9. Mugaritz (Errenteria, Spain)
10. Asador Etxebarri (Axpe, Spain)
11. Quintonil (Mexico City, Mexico)
12. Blue Hill at Stone Barns (Pocantico Hills, New York, USA)
13. Pujol (Mexico City, Mexico)
14. Steirereck (Vienna, Austria)
15. White Rabbit (Moscow, Russia)
16. Piazza Duomo (Alba, Italy)
17. Den (Tokyo, Japan)
18. Disfrutar (Barcelona, Spain)
At number 19, Geranium in Copenhagen, Denmark.
19. Geranium (Copenhagen, Denmark)
20. Attica (Melbourne, Australia)
21. Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée (Paris, France)
22. Narisawa (Tokyo, Japan)
23. Le Calandre (Rubano, Italy)
24. Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet (Shanghai, China)
25. Cosme (New York City, USA)
26. Le Bernardin (New York City, USA)
27. Boragó (Santiago, Chile)
28. Odette (Singapore)
29. Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen (Paris, France)
30. D.O.M. (São Paulo, Brazil)
Arzak in San Sebastian, Spain, which came in at number 31. Photograph: Relais & Châteaux
31. Arzak (San Sebastian, Spain)
32. Tickets (Barcelona, Spain)
33. The Clove Club (London, UK)
34. Alinea (Chicago, USA)
35. Maaemo (Oslo, Norway)
36. Reale (Castel Di Sangro, Italy)
37. Restaurant Tim Raue (Berlin, Germany)
38. Lyle’s (London, UK)
Astrid y Gastón in Lima, Peru, which came in at number 39
39. Astrid y Gastón (Lima, Peru)
40. Septime (Paris, France)
41. Nihonryori RyuGin (Tokyo, Japan)
42. The Ledbury (London, UK)
43. Azurmendi (Larrabetzu, Spain)
44. Mikla (Istanbul, Turkey)
45. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (London, UK)
46. Saison (San Francisco, USA)
47. Schloss Schauenstein (Fürstenau, Switzerland)
48. Hiša Franko (Kobarid, Slovenia)
49. Nahm (Bangkok, Thailand)
50. The Test Kitchen (Cape Town, South Africa)
Additional awards
Best Female Chef: Clare Smyth (Core by Clare Smyth, London)
Chef’s Choice Award: Dan Barber (Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, New York)
Best Pastry Chef: Cédric Grolet
Lifetime Achievement Award: Gastón Acurio
Art of Hospitality Award: Geranium (Copenhagen, Denmark)
One to Watch: Single Thread (Healdsburg, California)
BBVA Scholarship Winner: Jessie Liu (Taipei)
Sustainable Restaurant Award: Azurmendi (Larrabetzu, Spain)
Highest New Entry: Disfrutar (Barcelona, Spain)
Highest Climber Award: Den (Tokyo, Japan)
‘Moscow is in the middle of a food renaissance,” says Karina Baldry, a Muscovite chef and an author, now a Londoner. Whereas a decade ago rocket salads, Argentine steaks and sushi were all the rage, now – because of economic sanctions and a renewed patriotic mood – high calibre chefs are rediscovering their Slavic roots. They have started to use forgotten or newly created ingredients, such as local marbled beef and Russian mozzarella, and old cooking methods, involving the use of pechka ovens. For most Russians, eating out is still a special occasion, so even the most “democratic” places (a popular term to refer to more relaxed, less exclusive places) invest in expensive design, fabric napkins and table service. With some 12,000 restaurants in this sprawling city, we asked six Muscovite gourmands for their favourites.
StrEAT
“Venture outside of the touristy centre by taking the metro to Avtozavodskaya station for this gastronomical street,” says chef Karina Baldry who grew up in Moscow during Soviet times. “The food courts of my youth were either bare-shelved or exclusively for the top party echelons.” By contrast, StrEAT offers more than 30 street food stalls (mainly start-ups or small chains) from across the world: Lavka sells Dagestan-style flat pies (£1 a slice), and Crimean oysters; Kurkuma is very popular with a younger crowd for its version of Indian tikka masala, despite Russians traditionally being spice-averse. Opened in April 2018, in the not-quite-gentrified neighbourhood, StrEAT offers affordable prices (£3-£10 per dish) in a communal setting with diners sharing long tables. Karina recommends Georgian khinkali dumplings, pot-bellied pleated parcels with a mixture of beef and pork inside: “To eat them, you hold the dumpling by its doughy knot and carefully bite to suck the stock juices first, then munch on the rest. Delicious.”
• Ulitsa Leninskaya Sloboda 26, on Facebook, open daily 9am-10pm
Recommended by Karina Baldry, author of Russia on a Plate and co-founder of Produkt pop-up dinners in London
Uhvat
The word uhvat refers to a long-handled wooden utensil used to slide food in and out of a pechka, a wood-fired oven found in many Russian houses until the late 19th century. Uhvat is one of the restaurants leading the resurgence in traditional Slavic cooking, with slow-cooked dishes such as pumpkin kashas (a type of porridge) with honey and linden dressing (£3.50), baked roe with pickled bramble (£14) schchi soups with fermented cabbage and chichelindas, an old recipe for pate, here made with ox tail (£5). Don’t leave without tasting toplyonoe moloko, a thick creamy dessert made by baking milk for several hours. The pechka oven features in many Russian fairytales – the Baba Yaga witch shoves children into ovens – and takes the centre stage at Uhvat. Daily rituals, such as using goose feathers to dust out the ashes, enhance the magical atmosphere.
• Rochdelskaya street 15-41, uhvat.moscow, open daily noon-midnight
Recommended by Pavel Syutkin, food historian, blogger and author of the USSR Cook Book
Oblomov
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Alexey Verpeka
Tile-clad fireplaces, huge pechka ovens, plush chairs: Oblomov recreates the world of well-heeled and well-fed merchants of 19th century Russia. Oblomov is a character in the eponymous classic novel by Ivan Goncharov. There’s so much attention to detail that even the pet parrot here swears in literary Russian. However, the menu is much more than gimmickry. For a stylish lunch on a budget, start with home-pickled porcini mushrooms (£7), followed by veal and lardo borscht (£5) with half a dozen (“no less!” the menu says) little meat pies (£6). Make sure you’ve space for some home-made wild strawberry ice-cream for pudding (£5).
• First Monetchikovsky pereulok 5, restoblomov.ru, open daily noon-midnight
Recommended by Pavel Syutkin
Severyane
“When non-Russian friends visit me in Moscow I try to show them Russia beyond its matryoshka dolls” says Alexander Sysoev, founder of the Russian Restaurant Festival. Alexander suggests starting the day at Severyane (which means “northerners”, referring to the Russian north that has been piquing the interest of Moscow chefs lately). There are twists on traditional cuisine, such as pike caviar on poached eggs (£4), blinis with Russian pastrami (£5), eclairs with crab (£11) from the Kamchatka peninsula (a region that is closer to Tokyo than to Moscow). The dimly lit atmosphere – “a cross between a Siberian hut and Hogwarts, with shaman music” as Alexander puts it – and breakfast until 4pm, makes Severyane a good option for those who’ve been partying the night before. If you come back in the evening (you should, for the slow-roasted duck with apples, £10, for example), order vodka “after which any soul would Russify,” adds Alexander.
• Bolshaya Nikitskaya 12, severyane.moscow, open daily 9am-midnight
Recommended by Alexander Sysoev, founder of the Russian restaurant festival
Lepim-varim
This is Russian fast food par excellence: the dumplings are made from scratch on-site – “Lepim-varim” means shaping and boiling. One of a small chain specialising in pelmeni (a Russian version of ravioli), options include “uncle from Kamchatka” (king crab from the far east of Russia), “a mad couple” (venison and boar) and “the Caucasian prisoner” (stretchy Georgian Suluguni cheese). Order at the counter and give your name, just like in Starbucks. Regular long queues prove the success of the concept: from students to government officials and businessmen. “Ravioli are fine, of course, but pelmeni are so much better,” says Alexander.
• Several branches, try the one on Prospekt Mira, 26-1, lepimivarim.ru, open daily 11am-midnight
Recommended by Alexander Sysoev
Ottepel
“I was too little to remember Soviet realities but at Ottepel my genetic memory kicks in, registering such details as classic Soviet bevelled glasses and a separate menu section of buterbrody open sandwiches,” says Muscovite foodie Katerina Afonchenkova. These sandwiches (recently renamed bruschettas on the menu) were typical of Soviet canteens, with toppings such as rye with Latvian sprats, or herring and baked beetroot. Ottepel means thaw, referring to the period from 1953 to 1964 under Nikita Khrushchev when the communist regime was relaxed. This kind of nostalgia for the “good old Soviet days” can so easily be overdone with kitsch design elements – the venue is the restored Soviet exhibition pavilion after all – but Ottepel manages to get the balance right. The menu is vaguely Europeanised, but try some reinterpreted Soviet classics, like beetroot borscht soup with duck (£5) or fried potato cakes with mushrooms and marinated onions (£6).
• Prospekt mira, 119 building 311, ottepel-restoran.ru, open daily noon-1pm
Recommended by Katerina Afonchenkova, director of restaurant marketing agency FoodisPR
Staff canteen at Arbatskaya metro station
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Arbatskaya metro station. Photograph: Getty Images
Few know that you can dine deep within the belly of Moscow’s famous palatial metro system (the first lines were built in the 1930s under Stalin). These staff canteens mainly serve train drivers and metro personnel, but are also open to public. One of the quirkiest is Buffet Number 11 (canteens, shops and many other things were numbered during Soviet times) within Arbatskaya station. In a 1930s style, with cashiers wearing starched caps and walls covered in old-school propaganda posters, the menu has traditional Soviet “complex lunches”, including a vitaminnyj salad of shredded carrots and cabbage, a plate of borsch and light cheesecakes with fruit compote. The prices are Soviet-style too, £3-5 for the lunch menu.
• Arbatskaya metro station, no website or phone number, open daily 8am-7pm
Recommended by Katerina Afonchenkova
Pasticceria Don Giulio
“The best cannoli in Moscow” states Dmitrij Alekseyev, a food journalist. The bakery and cafe, which also has a satellite restaurant, was set up by expat Italians in the 1990s. The pastries are made in-house daily with Russian ricotta, and strike that perfect Sicilian balance of crispy dough, light cream, citrus and dark chocolate. Try the ricotta cheese in syrniki, a type of cheesecake served pistachio cream (£3.50). Soups are popular lunch options here, like borlotti beans with sun dried tomatoes (£3) or try the homemade sausages served with sliced oranges (£5.50). Rissoto starts from £5.30. The jolly atmosphere created by Giulio, the owner, is what brings many punters back from Muscovite hipsters to Italian expats longing for dishes without dill (the herb Russians use like seasoning). Prices are chilled too, with small mark ups on wines – nothing short of a miracle in the centre of Moscow.
• Pokrovka 27 building 1, dongiulio.ru, Mon-Thurs 10am-10pm, Fri-Sun 10am-11pm
Recommended by Dmitrij Alekseyev, food journalist and a restaurant critic for restoran.ru
Dorogomilovsky market
How to experience Russian chic on the cheap? Come to Dorogomilovsky food market (Moscow’s equivalent of London’s Borough Market) at around 10am and get a baguette from Khlebnaya Kroshka (The Breadcrumb), then top with slices of wild salmon, smoked on alder or apple tree chips from fish stall 355c (numbers are sometimes used instead of names); or fetch a peeled pomegranate to go with a lepyoshka flatbread stuffed with lots of herbs.
• Ulitsa Mozhayskiy Val 10, on Facebook, open daily 7am-8pm
Recommended by Arusya Gukasyan, chef and owner of seafood restaurant Rico
Cafe at the Kyrgyzstan embassy
You could spend weeks trawling through varieties of dumplings across Moscow, from Siberian pelmeni to Georgian khinkali. Some of the best are manti, dished up in the canteen of the embassy of Kyrgyzstan, the Central Asian country on the ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean. These parcels have wrinkly dough and are filled with juicy minced lamb. “The meat comes from animals normally fed on grass and wild thyme,” Arusya says. The filling must have a generous amount of lamb fat, so best if you have them with a mildly sparkling ayran yoghurt drink or hot tea. The somewhat outdated interior of the restaurant and waitresses in colourful traditional headscarfs make the setting all the more authentic. “Like sitting in a cafe somewhere in the Near East,” adds Arusya.
• Bolshaya Ordynka 62C 1, restaurant-1768.business.site, open daily 10am-11pm
Recommended by Arusya Gukasyan
