Pete Wells spears the clichés in this scathing article that has illustrations to match.
"... Brains are big in other restaurants on the list. Rasmus Munk, chef of the eighth-best restaurant in the world, Alchemist, in Copenhagen, pipes a mousse of lamb brains and foie gras into a bleached lamb skull, then garnishes it with ants and roasted mealworms. Another of the 50 or so courses — the restaurant calls them “impressions”— lurks inside the cavity of a realistic, life-size model of a man’s head with the top of the cranium removed. ...
... But the list is dominated by places that normal people can’t get into, where the few diners who will go to almost any length for reservations will go home feeling bloated and drunk. They are not restaurants, or not just restaurants. They are endurance tests, theatrical spectacles, monuments to ego and — the two most frightening words in dining — “immersive experiences.” ...
... One well-traveled diner told me about a recent, four-hour meal at Disfrutar, in Barcelona — No. 1 this year. He said he was “blown away” and at the same time he never wants to go back. “It was an assault, and not fun,” he said. ...
... Whether the World’s 50 Best seeks out these spectacular spectaculars or has simply been hijacked by them is impossible to tell. The list’s website is a model that should be studied by anyone who wants to arrange words that sound important and don’t mean anything. ...
... The contradiction at the core of the list is that it has become a publicity machine that directs enormous amounts of attention and business toward some of the least-accessible dining rooms in the world.
The chefs may fool themselves into believing that they’re operating idea factories, that they’re offering intellectual journeys and emotional wallops. But they’re really just competing for votes on a listicle that will reduce whatever they achieve in the dining room to strings of clichés on the World’s 50 Best Website. ..."
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