The list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants has just been revealed. Here’s the best of the best.
Every year, more than 300 food writers, critics, chefs and restaurateurs vote to decide on the best restaurants Asia has to offer.
READ ALSO: Winning Cuisine: Filipina Chef Johanne Siy Is Crowned Asia’s Best Female Chef 2023
The awards ceremony was held in Singapore’s Resorts World Sentosa, where special awards were also handed out.
Philippines-born head chef Johanne Siy received the “Asia’s Best Female Chef” award for her work at Singapore restaurant Lolla.
Meanwhile, Manila’s Toyo Eatery was given the Flor de Caña Sustainable Restaurant Award. The restaurant prioritizes the sustainability of people, cultural heritage, and terroir.
Here are the top five Asian restaurants that made the list.
1. Le Du
Based in Bangkok, the restaurant’s modern Thai cuisine has been climbing up the ranks since 2017.
Some of Le Du’s seasonal dishes include crab with mushroom and homemade sriracha, three different kinds of seaweed and algae with prawns and fish sauce sorbet, and khao kluk kapi of river prawn with brown rice risotto laced with shrimp paste.
2. Sézanne
Sézanne in Tokyo opened in July 2021 as the city’s most hotly anticipated new restaurant of the year.
British chef Daniel Calvert offers dishes ranging from foie gras with duck confit and Madeira jelly to Shiranuka venison with sweet potatoes from Kagoshima and his own take on peppercorn sauce.
3. Nusara
Nusara, also based in Bangkok and owned by Le Du’s Chef Ton and his brother Tam, has been hugely popular since opening in 2020. The restaurant serves traditional Thai cuisine with a twist.
Its 12-course tasting menu runs through creative snacks like mackerel with coconut and cucumber, Hokkaido scallop with sweetcorn and cured egg yolk, and tom kla soup.
4. Den
Chef Zaiyu Hasegawa’s Tokyo restaurant is creative, contemporary, accessible, and welcoming. These are the qualities that put Den at the top of last year’s list.
Highlights from the menu include foie gras monaka wafers as an appetizer, the now-classic “DFC” chicken, the 20-plus-ingredient Den garden salad with emoji carrots, and donabe gohan (claypot-cooked rice) topped with wagyu beef, seasonal seafood or wild plants, and mushrooms.
5. Gaggan Anand
The third Bangkok restaurant to make the list, Chef Gaggan Anand’s restaurant has ranked at number one for a record four times from 2015-2018.
Having closed the first iteration of his restaurant in 2019 and reopening later in the same year, Anand debuted back in the top five in 2021, earning the Highest New Entry Award.
Anand’s highly creative menus include dishes like Lick It Up which is a multi-colored Holi gulal made from vegetable dyes, Flower Power which features goat’s brain mousse, and Brain Freeze, an ice cream whose ingredients need to be guessed by the guests.
Banner image via Instagram @ledubkk.
