Why 'best-restaurant' lists are nothing of the sort

Best-restaurant lists are something of a love/hate thing for me. I basically hate them but love being included in them, for the same reason I liked being on the art wall in school (even though I knew it was because I’d sucked up all year to get there). Recognition in any form for hard work is always appreciated. I have no problem with lists existing. But I wonder whether they ever actually tell us anything useful.

This weekend we saw a new list of Yelp’s 100 best UK restaurants. Number 1 was taken by Dishoom, an upmarket Indian concept with three big sites in London. Dishoom has members of the Tilda rice family and, therefore, significant funding behind it. It also has excellent customer service, the food is faultless and all the sites have a great vibe going on so it’s not necessarily an unworthy winner. There are a lot of my favourite places in the list too. Patty and Bun makes No 9 for serving great burgers. Barrafina also makes the top 10 and Hawksmoor is at No 22.
It’s a nice list, and I’m pleased for everyone in it, but, as with as a lot of such user-generated content, it’s also a very weird list. In at No 6 is a place in Edinburgh called the Hula Juice Bar and Gallery. I spent 25 years of my life in Edinburgh and I’ve seen it flourish into one of the best cities in the county for eating out. I haven’t been to Hula Juice Bar, but I think it’s fair to ask: is a cafe that sells juice, bagels, cakes and hot wraps, really likely to be the best restaurant in Edinburgh, much less the 6th best in the UK? Is it even a restaurant at all?

On the other end of the scale you have lists such as the “world’s 50 best” which are about as far from user-generated as you can get. These lists for fine-dining places only. Chefs, food writers and restaurateurs admire the level of skill in the kitchen, and the attention to detail put into in every aspect of the customer experience. Just because I know more people who have enjoyed dining at a Street Feast event or Meat Liquor more than have enjoyed dining at El Celler de Can Roca doesn’t mean I think either should rank higher in any list. The truth is stark: neither list is genuinely about finding the best. It is extremely subjective. User-generated lists are simply about meeting our daily expectations and the world’s 50 best is about innovation and industry influence. Which is fine.
A boundary-pushing restaurant which sells 23 dishes to a customer will have a much harder task of satisfying that customer’s expectation, especially when it has been told it’s one of the best in the world. On the other hand, a local cafe that delivers great food for less than a tenner can easily meet its customers’ expectations. That doesn’t mean it’s better or worse than the likes of Heston Blumenthals’ Fat Duck but its simply incomparable on almost every level. It’s like rating the best football team in the country by number of games won rather than by league. The winner might be some pub team from Kilmarnock that won 63 out of the 64 games it played that year. Doesn’t make it better than Man City though.