The World’s Best Restaurants in 2023

This year’s edition of 'The World's 50 Best Restaurants' by publishing group William Reed Business Media was released Tuesday night. The ranking is one of the most highly anticipated events of the culinary calendar.

The so-called Oscars of gastronomy have named Central in the Peruvian capital Lima as the top restaurant in the world, followed by two Spanish restaurants - Disfrutar in Barcelona and DiverXO in Madrid. All three restaurants had ranked among the top 5 in 2022 and notched up as last year's front runner, Copenhagen's Geranium, did not feature on the list per the ranking's rules. The rest of the top ten roundup includes one more Spanish and two more Latin American restaurant as well as a new entry from Denmark: Alchemist, also in Copenhagen.

Having been touted as a gastronomic destination for years, two restaurants from Lima actually placed in the top 10 this year. Gold medalist Central - run by husband and wife duo Virgilio Martínez and Pia León - has its own research arm and serves 15 courses per meal that take diners through Peru's different altitude levels from the sea floor to the high Andes. Maido, placed sixth, combines Japanese and Peruvian influences - a style that helped catapult Lima onto the gastronomic scene in the 1990s.

As far as U.S. entries go, one restaurants made this year's top 10 (after none in 2022). Ranked eighth, Atomix in Manhattan's Koreatown serves modern Korean dishes, seats only 14 and climbed up 25 spots since last year, an astonishing feat for the list.

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants was first launched 20 years ago by the British magazine Restaurant Magazine as an alternative to the Michelin stars system. The ranking has faced criticism in recent years for elitism, with claims of jurors favoring restaurant owners they know, and for featuring mostly restaurants in Europe and a couple of metropolises around the world. After last year had featured only one entry from Africa in the top 50, the South African restaurant in questions has since moved to rank 75, leaving no honorees from Africa - or India, in 2023, as Bon Appétit points out.