Asia's 50 best restaurant list leaves an unpleasant taste
The list should not become like that of a stock market index, juggling the same names up and down the totem pole.
For a much-anticipated list that makes or breaks restaurants, the newest Asia's 50 Best, released last night amid the usual grandeur in Macau, has been completely without any spark of excitement. At least for me.
As Indians, we have a good reason to celebrate – Indian Accent has risen 11 notches since last year, landing at 19th position, compared with 30th in 2017. As flag-bearers of Indian Cuisine, we must also raise a toast to Gaggan Anand for the fourth year in a row, for his eponymous restaurant in Bangkok is Asia's top, yet again. India gets another place on the list (barely!) – Wasabi by Morimoto at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai is at number 49; the larger Indian sub-continent gets two more – Dharshan Munidasa's two Colombo restaurants, Ministry of Crab (25) and Nihonbashi (45), which seem to have established squatter's rights on the list, in the same manner as Gaggan, Indian Accent and Wasabi by Morimoto.
Compare this with nine restaurants each in Tokyo, Bangkok and Hong Kong, seven in Singapore, three each in Seoul and Taipei, two each in Osaka and Shanghai, and one each in Fukuoka, Macau and Bali. Japan is the clear leader with 12 restaurants on the Asia's 50 Best list. And in the gastronomical world as determined by the jury of Asia's 50 Best, restaurants outside the crescent stretching from Japan to Indonesia may as well not exist.
What surprises me is that the jury has not found any restaurant worth its attention in the whole of Mainland China (I guess I shouldn't be complaining about India's fate!), and places such as Dubai and the Gulf Cooperation Council states seem to have melted away from the edible globe. There clearly is an East Asian/South-East Asian bias at work.
As an Indian who understands Indian Cuisine and can contextualise it against the best offerings of the world's trendiest cities, I am affronted by the limited presence of Indian restaurants. Off the cuff, I can list six restaurants (lined up in order of preference) — Masque (Mumbai), The Bombay Canteen (Mumbai), Toast & Tonic (Bangalore), Masala Library (New Delhi), Bomra's (Goa) and Artusi (New Delhi) — that deserve to be on Asia's 50 Best. The purpose of such lists is to discover new landmark restaurants and not to be like a stock market index, juggling the same names up and down the totem pole. I didn't come across any such revelation in the list, and I don't expect anything better next year.