There are a lot of restaurant guides vying to be the top authority on where to eat in the world, but The San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best list is the only one that covers every single country in the world. It’s also the glitziest, with a star-studded awards ceremony and a build-up that lasts days before and after the results are announced. The list is compiled from the votes of over a thousand food critics from across the globe, then written up by a chair of twenty-six. This year the event took place in Bilbao, Spain – a city known for its incredible food scene – and it was Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy that was voted the best in the world. This is the second time Osteria Francescana has taken the top spot after it won for the first time in 2016.
As well as the top fifty restaurants in the world, the awards hand out some separate gongs as well. The most controversial is for The World’s Best Female Chef (won by the UK’s own Clare Smyth, previously of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and now running her own restaurant Core by Clare Smyth), with many critics asking the question why gender should matter in an awards ceremony based on skill and talent. While Clare agreed that separating male and female chefs was ‘strange’, she also recognised that there aren’t enough women ‘coming through at the top and we need to do something about it’. Referencing the fact that she's constantly asked what it's like to be a female chef, she said: 'I'm not sure because I've never been a male chef!'