World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026, Digi Mart USA News (Lima, Peru): The 50 Best Restaurants 2026 list has revealed the 50 restaurants shaping the global gastronomic conversation, with several destinations new to the ranking and others returning.
The ceremony was held on November 4 in Lima, Peru, and brought together restaurants from 28 territories across six continents. This year the list included 11 new entries to the Top 50 and five restaurants that returned to the ranking, while Kadeau, Tuju and Naar also received special recognitions.
As every year, the list is built from votes by more than 1,100 members of The 50 Best Restaurants Academy, divided into 28 regions and made up of chefs, restaurateurs, food journalists and travelers with restaurant experience around the world. Mexico received good news: Quintonil rose to number four and was recognized as the best restaurant in Latin America.
Asador Etxebarri moved up from second place in 2025 to take the number one spot. The restaurant, run by Bittor (also called Víctor) Arguinzoniz, is located in a small village in the Basque Country and is built around cooking with fire.
Arguinzoniz designed his own tools to control different types of wood, temperatures and distances from the fire according to each ingredient.
Its menu of roughly 14 courses lets the product take center stage, with seafood, meats and vegetables passing over the embers without losing what makes them special. The 50 Best describes it as a kitchen capable of turning simple, high-quality ingredients into extraordinary dishes through mastery of the grill.
Gaggan Anand has spent years trying to make fine dining far less serious, and the approach appears to be working: his restaurant moved from sixth place in 2025 to second in the world this year. His cuisine starts from Indian flavors but incorporates French, Thai and Japanese influences, molecular gastronomy techniques and a healthy dose of irreverence.
Here dishes may be represented by emojis, some are eaten directly with the hands, and others even require licking the plate.
The experience of more than 20 courses feels closer to a show than a traditional dinner, with music, color, humor and plenty of play around the table.
Calling Alchemist simply a restaurant falls short. Chef Rasmus Munk’s project blends gastronomy, performance, art, technology and activism within an experience that can last several hours and include up to 50 “impressions,” as the restaurant calls its distinct moments of the meal.
Diners move through different spaces while projections, installations and dishes address topics ranging from ocean pollution to animal welfare. The restaurant has a team of more than 100 people that includes cooks and sommeliers as well as performers, designers, 3D artists, a composer and even a screenwriter.
Quintonil is the fourth best restaurant in the world and the best in Latin America in 2026. The project that Jorge Vallejo and Alejandra Flores opened in Polanco in 2012 continues to build a contemporary Mexican cuisine deeply connected to the country’s ingredients.
Corn, chiles, nopales, herbs, insects and seafood appear on a menu that changes with the seasons and seeks to explore the possibilities of Mexican gastronomy without relying solely on tradition. This year it is the only Mexican restaurant within the top 50.
The Top 5 also includes one of the year’s biggest climbs. Wing rose from 11th place in 2025 to fifth in the world.
Chef Vicky Cheng spent two decades working with classical French cuisine before returning to Hong Kong and reconnecting with the flavors of his own culture. Wing grew from that, a concept that takes China’s great culinary traditions as its starting point and interprets them in a far more contemporary way.
Its seasonal menu explores the so-called eight great regional Chinese cuisines and combines technique, produce and stories around the country’s culinary heritage. The result is a vision of Chinese cuisine that respects tradition without feeling confined by it.
Among new entries, major climbs and restaurants that continue to defend their place year after year, The 50 Best once again offers plenty of reasons to plan trips around a table. And yes, seeing Quintonil at number four makes everything feel even better.
