Last year, Manresa finally cracked the Restaurant magazine list of the Top 50 Best Restaurants in the World — the criteria and judging of which has never been very clear to us — and The French Laundry bounced back up in the list to place 43rd after slipping below the 50 mark the previous year. This year, though, sees Manresa bumped back down, and the Laundry almost slips off as well, ranking 47th year. Meanwhile, Thomas Keller’s New York counterpart restaurant, Per Se, which serves a very similar menu to the French Laundry in a more urban setting, inexplicably ranks far higher, at number 11, suggesting to us that the criteria must be pretty subjective and somewhat at the whim of fashionability and newness. The Restaurant at Meadowood, which holds three Michelin stars and which many would argue is even better than the French Laundry, doesn’t place on the list at all, suggesting to us that the judges might not even make too often to California. See the whole list over at Grub Street New York, and also note that the top spot on the list is now taken by a Spanish restaurant, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, knocking Noma down for the first time in three years. Also see the organization’s “manifesto” here, which explains how the 900 panelists vote on this list each year. Update: We can now view the rest of the top 100, and Manresa only fell to 52, and Coi is at 58 this year, holding firm in the same spot as 2012.
