Predictions: World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023 Who Will Be Number One?

The time has once again arrived for the new edition of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants to be released. The extended 51-100 list was published last week, and the annual top 50 restaurant ranking, sponsored by San Pellegrino, will be released on Tuesday, June 20th, 2023. This year, the awards will take place in Valencia, Spain, at the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, and the event will also be live-streamed virtually for those who can’t physically be present. As is our annual tradition, we have made some predictions about this year’s awards. Keep reading to see who we think will be on the 2023 World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

Of course, as official TasteHunters for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, we will be present at the ceremony – so follow us on Instagram (@carnivorr and @andershusa) for a behind-the-scenes look at the festivities. If you want to hear our live updates with all the last-minute rumors, industry secrets, and insights, be sure to join The Hungries! Like last year, we will be having a virtual watch party together and discussing all things 50 Best on the forum. #TheHungriesKnowFirst

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The 50 Best Voters

The World’s 50 voters are anonymous, they are 50% male and 50% female, and at least 25% of the voters are rotated every year in order to keep the list fresh. There are over 1,000 industry experts who vote on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list every year – they are chefs and restaurateurs, food writers, and well-traveled gourmets. For more information on how the voting works, click here. A reminder: we are NOT voters and we have no insight into which restaurants will top this year’s highly anticipated list. We are just making our best guesses! To read more about our role as 50 Best TasteHunters, click here.

The Best of the Best

In 2019, The World’s 50 Best organization implemented a new rule to change up the list and bring in more diversity. Restaurants who have topped the 50 Best list are no longer eligible to win again. Instead, these winners move into the “Best of the Best” list, a hall of fame for all of the previous number one restaurants. Restaurants in this category include Geranium, Noma, Mirazur, Osteria Francescana, Eleven Madison Park, The French Laundry, El Celler de Can Roca, and The Fat Duck. Which restaurant will join the “Best of the Best” this year?

As we are based in Copenhagen, and dine most frequently around Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, our guesses for this year’s list are somewhat Scandinavian-focused. However, we tend to travel quite a bit, and the driving force behind any trip for us is food. In the past year, we have also visited the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Mexico, the United States, Finland, and Japan. As always when we travel, we try to go to all the best restaurants in these destinations, so our thoughts and opinions are primarily based on these recent trips. Keep reading to see our 2023 World’s 50 Best Restaurants predictions.

Predictions: The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023

At last year’s awards, Geranium in Copenhagen claimed the title of the World’s Best Restaurant 2022. Restaurant Central in Lima, Peru jumped from fourth to second place, so we are crossing our fingers that Virgilio Martínez and Pía León will take home the top prize and be crowned the best restaurant in the world this year. Virgilio and Pía have created an out-of-this-world, mind-blowing food experience that instantly soared into the top meals of our life. Central deserves all the recognition it’s received, and more. This is, without a doubt, one of the most groundbreaking and innovative restaurants in the world.

Another crowd favorite on the list is DiverXO in Madrid, which jumped from no. 75 in 2019, to no. 20 in 2021, and right up to no. 4 in 2022. What an insane trajectory! This extremely popular restaurant from chef Dabiz Muñoz has won the hearts of many diners and voters alike – and we think it’s likely that DiverXO could take the silver medal at this year’s awards. But Disfrutar and Asador Extebarri (currently ranked no. 3 and no. 6, respectively) are fierce contenders and equally popular restaurants, beloved by many. We doubt that these top scorers will shift much, so we think it’s safe to say there will be a strong Spanish showing in this year’s top five.

Last year, we predicted that Lido 84 (the 2021 Highest Climber Award) would jump into the top ten – and they jumped to number eight! This gem of a restaurant in Italy is one of our all-time favorite dining destinations, located right on the spectacular Lake Garda. Giancarlo Camanini is a world-class restaurant host, and his brother Riccardo is a master in the kitchen. We think these lovable Italian brothers are only headed one direction – up! Could Lido 84 sneak into the top five this year?

Impossible-to-book restaurant Alchemist first entered the list in 2021 at no. 58, and in 2022 they slingshotted up to no. 18, jumping forty spots! We wouldn’t be surprised if they skyrocketed into the top ten this year. Alchemist is the most mind-blowing dining experience we’ve had, with absurdly delicious and thought-provoking dishes from chef Rasmus Munk.

Our favorite restaurant in the world, Frantzén, jumped from no. 21 in 2019 to no. 6 in 2021, but dipped back to no. 25 in 2022. This was the biggest shock for us at last year’s awards ceremony, as we predicted that the iconic Stockholm restaurant would leapfrog right into the top three. Björn Frantzén and his team make some of the tastiest food we’ve ever had, in one of the most luxuriously relaxing restaurant settings ever. We hope that more voters have been able to visit Sweden in the last year, and that we’ll see Frantzén continue to climb in the top half of the list.

One of our favorite restaurants in the US, Atomix jumped ten spots last year, from no. 43 to no. 33. We are crossing our fingers that they will continue to climb and get recognition for the incredible Korean-inspired food they are serving. Junghyun ‘JP’ and Ellia Park are no stranger to the spotlight – last year, Atomix also won the Art of Hospitality award, and recently JP was crowned the “Best Chef in New York State” by the James Beard Foundation.

We also expect Ikoyi, our favorite fine dining restaurant in London, to continue to climb on the list this year. It entered the top 50 at no. 49 last year, and we think chef Jeremy Chan’s powerful cooking will continue to amass votes. We just hope he brings some of his famous jollof rice to the awards ceremony this year…

50 and Beyond…

As is tradition, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants released the 51-100 list a couple weeks ahead of the awards ceremony. This extended list gives us some clues about which restaurants could have jumped into the top fifty this year. Chef Pía León’s restaurant Kjolle in Peru (ranked no. 68 in 2022), Santiago Lastra’s London restaurant Kol (ranked no. 73 in 2022), and Daniel Calvert’s new Tokyo hotspot Sézanne (ranked no. 82 in 2022) are all noticeably missing from the bottom half of the 50 Best list. These spots in particular have been receiving a lot of buzz and media attention as of late (Sézanne most recently being crowned no. 2 on Asia’s 50 Best List 2023), and we enjoyed fantastic meals at all three restaurants in the past year. We would not be surprised if these restaurants soared into the top fifty restaurants, and since these culinary addresses are missing from the 51-100 list, it’s a good guess to assume that they did.

We were thrilled to see Mérito, one of our favorite restaurants in Peru, enter the list for the first time at no. 59. Chef Juan Luis Martínez previously worked at Central before opening his tiny, two-story restaurant in Lima. Next year, we’re confident that Mérito will soar into the top 50 – we had one of our best meals ever here last year.

Another restaurant that is close to our hearts is Kadeau, located here in Denmark. Chef Nicolai Nørregaard and his Bornholm boys were last spotted on the list at no. 105 in 2019, and this year they climbed up to no. 91. We hope this trend only continues – Kadeau is an absolute gem of a New Nordic restaurant.

Will Los Angeles ever get the culinary credit it deserves? Sadly, our favorite tasting menu restaurant in L.A., Somni, closed during the pandemic, but chef Aitor Zabala will be re-opening his dream restaurant later this summer. There’s no doubt in our minds that we’ll see Somni on the World’s 50 Best list in the near future. Chef Jordan Kahn’s culinary playground and spaceship restaurant Vespertine has also been closed temporarily, but we’ve heard it will also reopen soon. Further down the coast, we expect to see three-Michelin-starred restaurant Addison in San Diego find its rightful spot on this list. Chef William Bradley’s cooking is right up there with the best of them. Fingers crossed we see some more West Coast representation on the 50 Best list soon.

Newcomer Delta in Athens is another restaurant to be on the lookout for. Helmed by chefs Thanos Feskos (formerly of Geranium) and George Papazacharias (formerly of Maaemo, L’Air du Temps, and Under), this restaurant will be the one to put Greece on the map as a culinary destination. Delta hasn’t made it to the 51-100 list yet, but, with the amount of talent in that kitchen, we’re sure it’s just a matter of time.

One last shout-out goes to L’Enclume, where we enjoyed our absolute best meal of 2022. Simon Rogan’s farm-to-table fine dining restaurant is a special place, a true culinary oasis in the Lake District of the UK. Last summer, we had an absolutely unforgettable experience in Cartmel, and we rank our meal at L’Enclume as a top meal of our life.

Who do you think will be in the top five this year? Let us know in a comment below.