The World’s Best Restaurants in 2025
This year’s edition of 'The World's 50 Best Restaurants' by publishing group William Reed Business Media was released on Thursday night. The ranking is one of the most highly anticipated events of the culinary calendar.
The so-called Oscars of gastronomy have named Maido in Lima, Peru as the top restaurant in the world. It combines Japanese techniques and Peruvian ingredients into Nikkei cuisine, in particular referencing ingredients and traditions from the Peruvian Amazon.
Maido is followed by Asador Etxebarri in Atxondo, in the Basque country (an autonomous region of Spain) and Quintonil in Mexico City. Where four of the top ten restaurants this year were in Europe (two of which were in Spain, one in France and one in Denmark), Latin America also performed well with four, including the aforementioned Maido in Lima and Quintonil in Mexico City, as well as Kjolle in Lima and Don Julio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, placing in 9th and 10th rank, respectively. Asia’s top performer was Gaggan in rank 6, based in Bangkok.
The highest performing restaurant from the United States this year was Atomix in Manhattan's Koreatown, which serves modern Korean dishes. It came in rank 12, following Wing in Hong Kong. Other U.S. restaurants that featured on the list of 100 included Single Thread in Healdsburg, California (rank 80), Le Bernardin (90) and César (98) in Manhattan and Atelier Crenn in San Francisco (96).
The World’s 50 Best Restaurants was first launched 23 years ago by the British magazine Restaurant Magazine as an alternative to the Michelin stars system. The ranking has faced criticism over the years for elitism and for featuring mostly restaurants in Europe and a couple of metropolises around the world. For example, according to Eater, an online specialist food magazine, “nearly all of the restaurants that have been ranked first are located in Europe; those that aren’t in Europe serve European-style tasting menus; and all of the restaurants except Central are helmed exclusively by men.”
It has sought to address these issues, announcing in 2019 that it would have a 50/50 gender balance on its voting academy and introducing a rule that no restaurant that has earned the top title will be eligible for voting again.