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Every year in October the culinary world is on tenterhooks to find out which restaurants will lose, gain or maintain their coveted Michelin Stars. However, this year, another date has been added to the foodie calendar, with the inaugural World Restaurant Awards having taken place on the 18th of February. But while the Michelin Guide has years of tradition and history behind it, this newcomer is being heralded as its new ‘woke’ counterpart, designed to recognise restaurants that would otherwise go un-lauded on the international stage.
The ceremony took place in Paris with Restaurant of the Year being awarded to Wolfgat in South Africa, which also won the award for ‘off-beat destination’, another of the categories. The 20-cover restaurant is located beach-side in the Western Cape and serves food that is ‘seasonal, inspired by the weather, with a naturalist approach and minimum intervention’. To show that these are, in fact, awards with a difference, the restaurant’s relationship with its community was also considered by the judges.
The World Restaurant Awards 2019 website states that the awards were created by IMG in partnership with Joe Warwick and Andrea Petrini to ‘celebrate restaurants as culture, considered in the same way as film, art and music.’ The categories are divided into ‘Big Plates’, which are designed to ‘champion excellence and integrity while trying to better promote the diversity of the world's restaurant community’ and ‘Small Plates’, the more tongue-in-cheek, whimsical section of the awards that includes categories like ‘Tattoo-free Chef’ and ‘Tweezer-free Kitchen’.
England only received a single nod, with London’s Noble Rot wine bar winning the Red Wine-Serving Restaurant category, a Small Plate award that celebrates establishments still championing the red grape. The following is a list of all the winners in both sections.
Restaurant of the Year
Winner: Wolfgat - Paternoster, South Africa
Arrival of the Year
Winner: Inua - Tokyo, Japan
Atmosphere of the Year
Winner: Vespertine - Los Angeles, United States
Collaboration of the Year
Winner: Paradiso X Gortnanain - Cork, Ireland
Enduring Classic
Winner: La Mère Brazier - Lyon, France
Ethical Thinking
Winner: Refettorio (Food For Soul) - Various locations, Italy
Event of the Year
Winner: Refugee Food Festival - Paris (and worldwide), France
House Special
Winner: Lido 84 (Cacio e Pepe) - Lombardy, Italy
Forward Drinking
Winner: Mugaritz - San Sebastián, Spain
No Reservations Required
Winner: Mocotó - São Paulo, Brazil
Off-Map Destination
Winner: Wolfgat - Paternoster, South Africa
Original Thinking
Winner: Le Clerence - Paris, France
Instagram Account of the Year
Winner: Alain Passard (@alain_passard) - Paris, France
Long-Form Journalism
Winner: Lisa Abend - The Food Circus, Fool Magazine
Red-Wine Serving Restaurant
Winner: Noble Rot - London, United Kingdom
Tattoo-Free Chef
Winner: Alain Ducasse - Paris, France
Trolley of the Year
Ballymaloe House - Cork, Ireland
Tweezer-Free Kitchen
Winner: Bo.Lan - Bangkok, Thailand
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