It is also the Acqua Panna Best Restaurant in Europe is Noma in Denmark. Noma is best known for its fanatical approach to foraging but there is much more to this ground-breaking restaurant than the mere picking of Mother Nature's pocket. Noma is about offering the entire package, from its ingredient ingenuity to flawless execution, that makes it a beacon of excellence and which leads to an emotive, intense, liberating way of eating, unlike any other. Many have copied chef Rene Redzepi's approach, most have failed. For the best in class, Noma really is the number one place to go.
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The Ledbury Restaurant is a Michelin star restaurant with a lovely setting and located tucked away in the affluent but relatively off-piste Notting Hill, west London. Chef Brett Graham's small but perfectly realised restaurant has become one of the city's ultimate dining destinations. The tone is set by impeccable service, with the largely Antipodean front-of-house staff successfully walking the tightrope between formal and relaxed. Graham's equally exceptional food combines elements of French cuisine using traditional British ingredients, presented with charm and a big personality.
El Celler de Can Roca has consistantly been doing well and it is possibly the least well-known restaurant to have ever held the much-vaunted number-two spot on the list, a quirk which, far from being a hindrance, has allowed the three brothers Roca to get on with what they do best. Their 'emotional cuisine' with different ingredients and combinations can trigger childhood memories or take you back to a specific place in your past.
Mugaritz has two dégustation menus that change daily according to what Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz can get his hands on at the street markets and what's growing in the restaurant's herb garden. Whatever happens, you can expect to sample the team's intricate dishes that seek to reconnect diners with nature. His self-dubbed 'techno-emotional' approach sees the appliance of science and a rigorous understanding of ingredients jostle with produce-driven cuisine.
Much of the food at Osteria Francescana takes its inspiration from the art world, but this is only half the story. The unrivalled culinary heritage of the Emilia-Romagna region is chef Massimo Bottura's other great muse, and the kitchen offers a menu of traditional food alongside more left-field creations. The cooking is exciting and gratifying, the overall experience progressive and relaxed.
Alinea represents one of the most radical re-imaginings of fine food by any chef in American history and has propelled Grant Achatz to chef superstardom. Everything about his restaurant is unique, from the deconstructed food, unfamiliar flavour combinations and theatre to the tableware, with dishes served in and on all manner of implements: test tubes, cylinders, multi-layered bowls that come apart. It's boundary-shifting. IT has a 3 Star rating in Michelin Guide and voted the 6th best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine.
D.O.M has become a priority destination for all globe-hopping gastronomes, not that chef Alex Atala is resting on his laurels. Instead he scours the Amazon to pepper his with indigenous ingredients, from the staple manioc tuber and its tupuci juice to Amazonian herbs and the huge white-fleshed pirarucu fish to ensure his restaurant is unlike any other on the list. FastForward in D.O.M kitchen is a nice feature on theirwebsite.
If you like your food pretty, this is the place. Father-and-daughter team Juan Mari Arzak and Elena Arzak Espina's plates look fantastic: striking, colourful and imaginative, yet for the most part unfussy. The pair run the kitchen as equals and is a major presence in the dining room. Like the food, it pulls off the neat trick of balancing tradition and innovation, with warm, familiar service. The cooking is done by an incredible father-daughter team. They have one foot in Basque tradition and the other in 21st-century modernity, fusing local ingredients with a very contemporary style. Try the smoked white tuna with fresh figs and pine nuts.
It's hard not to be excited by Le Chateaubriand. It is effortlessly cool, understated yet accomplished, democratic, affordable and, perhaps most importantly, fun. Its lack of airs and graces – hard chairs and bare tables, the take-it-or-leave-it five-course fixed-price menu and the championing of natural wines – is not to everyone's tastes, but Le Chateaubriand doesn't really care. The restaurant has great price per head for a top 10 Restaurant in the world at around 60 Euro per head.
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