French put knife in with own best eatery list

French chefs and culinary experts have long been infuriated by the "World's 50 Best Restaurants" survey launched more than a decade ago by a British magazine. Photo / Thinkstock

War is declared, not for the first time, between France and Britain. The conflict might be called "Michelin star wars" or "the gastronomic empire strikes back".

French chefs and culinary experts have long been infuriated by the "World's 50 Best Restaurants" survey launched more than a decade ago by the British magazine Restaurant. In the 2014 list, for instance, there were only three French restaurants in the top 50. The highest was at 11th place.

The French gastronomic magazine Le Chef has now produced a rival list. And quelle surprise! Six of the world's top chefs, according to the survey, are French. The top two places go to Pierre Gagnaire (92nd in the 2014 Restaurant survey) and the ageing "pope" of French cuisine, Paul Bocuse, who is not in the "British" list at all.

The highest-placed UK restaurant in the French list is Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck at Bray, Berkshire, which is 28th. The restaurant that topped the "Best 50" list last year, Rene Redzepi's Noma in Copenhagen, does not even make the French magazine's top 100.

In presenting his new list, the editor of Le Chef, Francis Luzin, said that it was the "first accurate snapshot of the best restaurants in the world".

Luzin complained that the composition of the "jury" for the "50 best" was "problematic" because it allotted 10 jurors to each country - whether that country had a strong gastronomic tradition or not. This is inaccurate. The British survey is based on 36 regional juries of 27 chefs and cookery writers. France is a region of its own.

In any case, the jury chosen by Le Chef has a dubious claim to objectivity. The French magazine asked all the Michelin three- and two-star chefs in the world to name the "five restaurants where you should eat at least once in your life". The Michelin star system is skewed towards French and Japanese cuisine. Of the 512 three- and two-star chefs polled by the French magazine, 109 were in France. Many of the others were French "starred" chefs working elsewhere. No fewer than 137 members of the Le Chef "jury" were Japanese.

William Drew, former editor of Restaurant, now editor of the World's 50 Best Restaurants and its spin-offs, was philosophical about the rival list. "All these things are subjective. Our aim is to celebrate good cooking and attract attention to chefs all over the world who are doing great things."

Has Le Chef magazine over-egged the pudding with such a Francocentric list? "You could say that," Drew said. "I couldn't possibly say it myself."

- Independent