|
Nothing is forever, not even Heston Blumenthal’s position as top of the pile. Not that he no longer cooks as well as before but that last year, when the restaurant testers went round, it would seem that Gordon Ramsay was obviously getting out of bed on the right side more often.
And that is what makes the Volkenborn Restaurant Hitlist so interesting. After entering the data from three major British restaurant guides ( the AA, the Good Food Guide and Michelin) and having done the calculations Gordon Ramsay at Gordon Ramsay has made it to number one in this wholly unbiased listing.
Blumenthal is not alone in having to keep an eye on the competition but Alain Roux at Waterside Inn took a cropper too. Shane Osborn, Andrew Fairlie, David Everitt-Matthias and Sat Bains all have in common the fact that they have lost points over the last twelve months and have dropped from up there where the air is becoming continually rarer.
The list of movement is possibly an indicator as to the rearranging of interests and developments over the past few years and of what is to come. Within the top twenty over half have fallen to lower placings. On taking a look further down towards the second half of the first century there is an upward surging of newcomers to the higher ranks.
Interestingly enough the Briton’s willingness to eat non-European food is mirrored in the new list. With Cheong Wah Soon at Yauatcha, Atul Kochhar at Benares and Karunesh Khanna at Amaya bearing witness to a traditional delight in the exotic as they slowly make their way up the ranks of the top one hundred.
This is a serious website but would it not be amusing to give the true punter a chance to see if he can pick next year’s winners?
Text by Jane K. Clouston
|
