The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2012: Who made the cut?

by Anthea Gerrie

Cooking with obscure Nordic ingredients paid off for chef Rene Redzepi, whose Noma was named World's Best Restaurant for the third year in a row. Paris, New York and Tokyo, eat your heart out -- the world?s best restaurant is not on your turf, but a dimly-lit warehouse in an obscure part of Copenhagen no one had heard of eight years ago.

That?s when chef Rene Redzepi opened Noma with somewhat strange ambitions -- to serve only food native to Scandinavia -- so no olive oil or other fancy Mediterranean stuff.  He created dishes with obscure items like milk skin, hay and pine needles, and against all the odds, it worked.

Noma this week made it a hat trick in the World?s Best 50 Restaurants awards, taking the top award for the third year in a row. And behind him come a whole raft of new young culinary hotshots known as the New Nordics -- 10 percent of this year?s Top 50 restaurants are in Scandinavia.

Spain has done even better, mind you, with 30 percent of the Top 10 -- yet again -- in a row. Spanish restaurants remain at no. 2, 3 and 8, just like last year. And this is without the help of superstar chef Ferran Adria, first-ever winner of the awards, who broke records by holding the top spot for four years in a row with elBulli before closing it in 2011.  

All are in the foodie north of the country, ditto another two which made the list.

read more

industrial maintenance chemicals regenerative catalytic oxidizers peptide synthesis protocol