SA restaurants ranked among world's best

Cape Town’s Fyn restaurant has been ranked number 37 in the World’s 50 Best Restaurant List, with La Colombe, also in Cape Town, and the small restaurant Wolfgat on the West Coast rated among the world's top 100.
The best restaurant in the world is Geranium in Copenhagen.
At Geranium, the specialty is seasonal Scandi food, served on the 8th floor of a football stadium with views of the park. It was opened in the middle of the financial crisis, in 2010. “All odds were against us,” said chef owner Rasmus Kofoed, in a speech after he won.
It’s the second year in the row that a restaurant from the capital of Denmark was at the top of the list. Last year, Noma won the Number 1 spot.
The world’s second-best restaurant this year is Central, in Lima. Number 3 was Disfrutar in Barcelona.
The ceremony took place in London at Old Billingsgate, a repurposed fish market on the Thames in the midst of London’s brutal heat wave; the night was projected to be the hottest in the city’s history at around 30C. The event was hosted by actor Stanley Tucci. There was little mention of the heat wave at the ceremony.
Some past Number 1 winners, including Jean Roca of El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, popped in throughout the ceremony to present awards. The most surprising was Will Guidara, the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, who had a well-publicized split with chef Daniel Humm, current owner of the restaurant, which was recently hit with negative press about living wages for staff.
Invasion
In February, World’s 50 Best announced it was moving the awards from the original location in Moscow, in a swift response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There are no restaurants in Russia on this year’s list, although last year there were two Moscow spots in the top 30
Former winners are not eligible to win again. That notably includes Noma, which has won the award five times, including last year. It now features in a "Best of the Best" category which includes Mirazur in the South of France, which won in 2019 and was the world’s best restaurant for two years, because the awards were cancelled in 2020 as a result of the pandemic.
With Eleven Madison Park also in the emeritus category, the top US restaurant is New York’s Korean tasting-menu destination Atomix at No. 33. Asia, having been hit particularly hard by pandemic restrictions, just made the top 20 with Den in Tokyo. Last year, multiple Asian restaurants were in the top 10.
This year’s rankings were compiled from the votes from 1 070 people in the food world, from 27 regions around the world.
The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list is organised and compiled by UK-based William Reed Business Media. The list got started in 2002, in Restaurant magazine.
The second half of the list, places ranking 51-100, was announced in early July. Winners included the Mexican-accented Kol in London, from Noma alum Santiago Lastra, as a new entry at No. 73. Another London restaurant, Brat, came in at 81, despite landing in the No. 3 position on the Estrella Damm National Restaurant Awards earlier this year. Fin24