France struck back at foreign “world’s best restaurants” listings that ignore French restaurants with a list of its own in which five of the 10 top chefs are French.
“La Liste” ranks the world’s top 1,000 restaurants by aggregating scores of about 4,000 establishments in more than 200 international guidebooks and Web sites, including France’s Gault-Milau and Michelin, but also newspaper rankings, food blogs and customer-review-based sites such as Tripadvisor.
The list is an initiative from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ tourism council and is to be presented by French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius on Thursday.
“What is missing is an objective ranking of global gastronomy,” said Philippe Faure, a French diplomat in charge of tourism promotion and head of the Tables of Five Continents association that publishes La Liste.
The top restaurant in the list is Lausanne, Switzerland-based Le Restaurant de l’Hotel de Ville, run by French-born chef Benoit Violier.
Guy Savoy in Paris is ranked fourth, Maison Troisgros in Roanne eighth, l’Auberge du Vieux Puits in Fontjoucouse ninth and in 10th spot is the Tokyo-based restaurant of French chef Joel Robuchon.
Leading British reviewer “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants” only includes five French restaurants, with the first — the Mirazur in Menton — in 11th place.
Its top restaurant, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, only comes in at sixth on the French list.
“The international rankings are not always transparent or objective and we observe that they have a bias towards playing down French gastronomy,” said Florian Escudie, a ministry tourism adviser.
La Liste includes 127 Japanese, 116 French, 97 American and 73 Chinese restaurants, as well as more than 50 Spanish and German establishments.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in