Created to rival the World's 50 Best Restaurants, The World Restaurant Awards will give chefs the red carpet treatment and valuable airtime, at a gala event that will be staged to mirror the "glamour" and glitz of awards ceremonies in film, music, art and fashion.
On Monday, a constellation of some of the biggest chefs in the world of haute gastronomy gathered in Paris for a workshop to help collaborate on a set of objectives for the awards. The chefs in attendance included Daniel Humm, Dominique Crenn, Clare Smyth, Yannick Alleno, Alex Atala, Elena Arzak, and Massimo Bottura. Incidentally, these are some of the very chefs who make recurring appearances on the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards list, organized by the UK-based industry publication, Restaurant magazine.
In fact, it wouldn't be that big a stretch to call the World Restaurant Awards, the anti-World's 50 Best Restaurants, or what the group criticized as an "arbitrary pop chart approach" to restaurant ranking. "The World Restaurant Awards will be conducted with complete integrity, total transparency and a real sense of inclusivity," said creative director Joe Warwick in a statement. "We want to make everyone think about the full gamut of the world's great restaurants -- old and new, from luxury destinations to humble institutions -- and what makes them so special."
It's also worth noting that the organizers have a bitter history with their rival: Warwick is the co-founder of The World's 50 Best Restaurants awards, while Andrea Petrini, chair of the judging panel, is the former regional France chairman for the 50 Best. "We'd like to make The World Restaurant Awards about the pleasure of eating, drinking, travelling and forward thinking," Petrini added, saying, "Not the Nobel Prize for food but rather our take on the idea of an Oscars for the restaurant world, with all the sense of zeitgeist and glamour that implies."
The World Restaurant Awards has the backing of global event management company IMG, which organizes everything from the Miss Universe pageant to Ultimate Fighting Championship and the EuroCup. It's still unclear how the World Restaurant Awards will mark their distinction from a sea of existing restaurant rankings which include the World's 50 Best, La Liste and Opinionated About Dining, all of which purport to be the most authoritative classification via methodologies that rely on complicated algorithms or the weight of the world's most influential gourmands.
In the US, the James Beard Foundation Awards also bills itself as the "Oscars" of the American dining scene.
Meanwhile, over on Instagram, attendees offered a sneak peek at some of the categories and awards that are being considered:
They include:
Restaurant of the year
Instagram account of the year
Travel destination
The restaurant world's most influential
Far-flung beauty
Ethical thinking
Tattoo-free chef of the year
Enduring classic
Forward-drinking
Innovator of the year
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