Home flavor: Kangaroo tartare, one of Attica's signature dishes.

The annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants Award brings in maestros in the culinary world for the Grammies of Gastronomy award night.

The grand Royal Exhibition Building in the heart of Melbourne, Australia, was luminous with magenta lighting on Wednesday evening.

Handsome gentleman suited up in black-tie attire and ladies dazzled with beauty. A red carpet welcomed guests from around the globe.

There were no Hollywood celebrities, but a crowd of the world’s most powerful people in the food and beverage industry – culinary maestros, or in other words, chefs, was gathering. It was the awards night of the annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards.

An endless stream of delightful canapes was presented by Rockpool Dining Group of one of Australia’s most beloved chefs, Neil Perry. This year Melbourne had the honor of hosting the award, which was held in New York City last year.

Managing director of Tourism Australia John O’Sullivan said the awards aligned closely with his country’s global campaign focus on food and wine and provided another compelling chapter in the ongoing Restaurant Australia story.

Two Australian restaurants are on the list — one is Dan Hunter’s Brae at 44 and the best restaurant in Australasia, Attica, by chef Ben Shewry at 32.

That evening, New York’s Eleven Madison Park, by Swiss-born chef Daniel Humm and co-owner Will Guidara, was named the world’s best restaurant. The place, where the prized dish included celery root cooked in pig bladder, was praised for its sense of fun in fusing creative menu with gracious hospitality

The world’s second-best restaurant title went to Italy’s Osteria Francescana by Massimo Bottura while Spain’s El Celler de Can Roca by three Roca brothers ranked third.

“The standard of World’s Best Restaurants list I believe is higher than before,” said Bottura.

Eleven Madison Park was the second non-European restaurant to win the title since the award’s inception in 2002 after California’s French Laundry.

The only Asian restaurant in the top 10 was Bangkok’s Gaggan, which ranked seventh. In the progressive-restaurant category, owner-chef Gaggan Anand served a modern take on his native Indian cuisine by deconstructing favorites like samosas and tikka masala. Singaporean chef Andre Chiang’s Andre was listed at number 14.

Indonesian restaurant Locavore in Ubud, Bali, which earlier this year ranked 22 in Asia’s Best Restaurant, a regional award by the World’s 50 Best, was not on this year’s list.

Joan Roca, one of the three Roca brothers that spent his Christmas holiday traveling around Yogyakarta and Bali, praised Indonesian cuisine.

“I’ve visited and tasted street foods around Yogyakarta’s royal palace and I liked it. It is sweet, spicy and have a character. When we came to Bali, which is only 40 minutes flight, the foods are totally different and showcasing layers of spices and great roasting technique. It’s amazing to see how diverse Indonesian cuisine is, and yes, I believe Indonesian cuisine can be as famous as Thailand,” he says.

Chairwoman of Indonesia Gastronomy Academy Vita Datau Messakh said Indonesia had always been known as a country with an abundance of spices and the world’s most diverse culture. “We need to cling to that. As we also possess greatness of local produce from around archipelago,” she said.

Pride in local produce and showcasing it to the gourmet universe is mandatory.

“You need to have a pride for your own local product. We live too much by thinking that product from overseas are much better,” said chef Ben Shewry, whose cooking approach in using uncommon indigenous Australian ingredients, like the emu, the largest bird in Australian and native wild herbs, is also what put his name on top.

Diners around the globe are more adventurous than before, willing to step out of their comfort zone to try new tastes.

“As a chef, we have to be able to apply any technique from around the world,” said Peruvian kitchen icon Virgilio Veliz of Central restaurant in Lima as a restless hunter of relatively unknown natural seasonings.

Some kitchen luminaries even dig into food history of their own homeland, like Heston Blumenthaal, who this year was awarded Lifetime Achievement.

In past years, Heston has tirelessly drawn on the roots of British cookery and created dishes based on both what he found in historical books and his childhood memories.

Being continuously inspired by cultural tradition is essential, the thing that makes one chef unique and the food honest even though the technique applied in the cooking process is modern.

Elena Arzak, a third generation of the legendary Basque restaurant Arzak in Spain, said that not only cultural tradition but also family was very important to every cook as they were your truest inspiration. She and her 74-year-old father, Juan Mari Arzak, still oversee the restaurant kitchen simultaneously.

Every stakeholder and culinary figure — from farmer to restaurateur — should work hand in hand to reach the goals.

“A chef must have big pride in their cities and culture, and it’s also their responsibility to nurture the younger generation of chefs to have that same mind-set and mission,” said Arzak.
“That will help to bring one city’s culinary to be known globally.”

— Photos by Kevindra

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