US-based magazine Food & Wine has named Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in Bray as the second most life-changing restaurant in the world.
Ferran Adria’s El Bulli in Roses, Spain, beat the three Michelin-starred restaurant to the top spot, mirroring the exact positions the two restaurants have held in the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants for the past four years.
Food & Wine’s list also includes several other restaurants featured in the 2009 World’s 50 Best rundown, such as Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, France and Mugaritz in Basque region, Spain.
Many of the magazine’s followers on Twitter were saddened to see Grant Achatz’s Alinea in Chicago, Bras in France, Extebarri in Spain, L’Arpege in Paris and Momofuku in New York excluded from the list.
Food & Wine magazine’s Top 10 Life-Changing Restaurants are:
1. ElBulli, Roses, Spain (Ferran Adrià)
2. The Fat Duck, Berkshire, UK (Heston Blumenthal)
3. Le restaurant de Pierre Gagnaire, Paris, France (Pierre Gagnaire)
4. The French Laundry, Napa Valley, USA (Thomas Keller)
5. Nihonryori Ryugin, Tokyo, Japan (Seiji Yamamoto)
6. Blue Hill, New York, USA (Dan Barber)
7. Mugaritz, Basque region, Spain (Andoni Luis Aduriz)
8. Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark (Rene Redzepi)
9. Combal.Zero, Piedmont region, Italy (Davide Scabin)
10. Aronia de Takazawa, Tokyo, Japan (Yoshiaki Takazawa)