Ranking the world's chefs and other food and drink news

'Chasing An Ideal,' World-Class Chefs Find Themselves Under Extreme Pressure

Is there such a thing as 'the world's best chef'? - Last week the death of chef Benoit Violier was widely reported - and in many headlines he was hailed as the "world's best chef", his restaurant as "the best in the world". But there is no agreement on how to rank chefs and restaurants and the award of "best" titles is a matter of hot dispute.

How the rankings work
World's 50 Best:
Poll of 972 experts: 1/3 food writers, 1/3 restaurateurs and 1/3 "well-travelled gourmets"
Each expert casts seven votes, for places they have visited within the past 18 months
At least three votes must be for restaurants outside their own geographical region
Michelin Guide:
Secret inspectors hired by Michelin, who usually have culinary school or a hotel college education, plus more than five years' experience in the restaurant industry as a manager or a chef
Separate guides are released for different countries or regions
Inspectors grade every restaurant they visit and award Michelin stars to a select few
La Liste:
Reviews are gathered from more than 200 publications and turned into scores
Top chefs rate the reliability of the reviews in each publication, allowing the scores to be weighted
Online customer reviews are integrated and an algorithm calculates a final score

Police Seize 9,000 Bottles of Fake Champagne - Italian police have seized 9,000 bottles of counterfeit Moët & Chandon Champagne, worth up to $392,000, in a workshop near Padova in Italy. The seizure, announced this week, happened at the end of last year when financial police were investigating a separate business and found a bottle of Moët & Chandon without a serial number on the label. Alongside the sparkling wine, police discovered a machine to wrap the bottles with Moët & Chandon packaging, and a further 40,000 fabricated Moët & Chandon labels.

What this scathing exchange between top scientists reveals about what nutritionists actually know - The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the federal government’s influential advice compendium, took more than a year to compile. It cites hundreds of scientific papers. It is built on the recommendations of an expert panel. The book shapes what millions of people eat. Yet ever since it was published last month, a very public, very caustic spat has been waged among experts over the quality of the science behind the recommendations and the extent to which any of the advice can be trusted.

Why a top food poisoning expert won’t ever eat these foods

America’s favorite coffee trend may be coming to an end - Several years ago, coffee pods seemed invincible. Sales of the single-serve cups were skyrocketing, more than tripling in the United States between 2011 and 2013. Sales of coffee pod machines were soaring, too, growing from 1.8 million units to 11.6 million between 2008 and 2013, according to data from market research firm Euromonitor. Today, however, things aren't looking quite so rosy for coffee in its most convenient form.