The best restaurants in Asia for 2023 according to voters of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List were announced in Singapore this week. At #1 is Le Du restaurant in Bangkok, a contemporary Thai, casual fine diner helmed by the immensely talented and sustainably minded Thai chef, Thitid ‘Ton’ Tassanakajohn. His restaurant Nusara, a tribute to his grandmother, landed at #3.
Whether you’re a fan of lists or not, restaurant lists such as Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants are helpful for food loving travellers looking for the best restaurants in Asia for 2023 – or the best restaurants in other regions they cover, such as the Middle East and Latin America.
Or the best restaurants in the world for that matter, because the regional lists are spin-offs of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, established by Restaurant magazine, a respected hospitality industry publication, as an alternative to the Michelin restaurant guides.
What sets the 50 Best Restaurants voters apart is that they’re members of regional ‘academies’, so voters for Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants come from Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, a group of more than 300 industry professionals.
In other words, they’re industry insiders: other chefs, restaurant owners, F&B directors, restaurant managers, sommeliers, food writers and restaurant critics, and so on. Nobody knows the restaurant industry better or is in a better position to know whether a restaurant is worth dining at or not than an industry insider.
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Here are the best restaurants in Asia for 2023 according to Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List.
Best Restaurants in Asia for 2023 According to Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List
At a glitzy event in Singapore a couple of nights ago, the best restaurants in Asia for 2023 according to voters on the academy of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List, were announced, and it’s a super handy list for restaurant-loving travellers to Asia.
I’m going to share more in another post on the Asian restaurants ranked on the list and the Asian cities with the highest numbers of restaurants on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List – as that says something about those cities as culinary destinations. Not surprisingly, Singapore and Bangkok are home to greatest number of restaurants on the list.
For now, I wanted to share my thoughts with readers on why I still think Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List is your best guide to the best restaurants in Asia, and that’s because voters are industry insiders: other chefs, restaurant owners, F&B directors, restaurant managers, sommeliers, food writers and restaurant critics.
I don’t think the Michelin red guides are as helpful to you as they are in their birthplace of Europe. The Asian Michelin Guide inspectors appear to use different criteria to judge eateries than that used in the original Europe Michelin guides – which isn’t helpful to European foodies who have a different set expectations developed over decades of using the ‘red book’.
Sites such as Trip Advisor can’t be trusted. Pre-pandemic the biggest problem was paid reviews. We once spotted a team at work from our balcony at a luxury Siem Reap resort, sitting around a table writing fake reviews over two days – under the supervision of one of Asia’s best-known tourism consultants.
I guess at least they stayed at the resort! Most paid ‘reviewers’ don’t leave their desks. We can pick the fake reviews in seconds, but unfortunately most travellers can’t, especially if they haven’t been to that destination before and don’t use sources beyond Trip Advisor.
Post-pandemic, the biggest problem with Trip Advisor is that so many restaurants on the site remain closed. A friend who visited Siem Reap last year ate at an eatery I’d never heard of and complained that it was terrible. (That will teach him for not consulting Grantourismo!) When I asked where he’d learnt about, he said Trip Advisor.
I visited the site to read the reviews, only to discover that dozens of closed restaurants were still on Trip Advisor, and that some of Siem Reap’s best restaurants were ranking low on the site. Travellers who dine at the best restaurants obviously don’t write reviews on Trip Advisor.
If you choose your restaurants from Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List at least you can be confident that you’re going to dine at some of the best restaurants in Asia. We can guarantee that the restaurants we’ve dined at on the list are most certainly some of Asia’s best.
Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list and how it’s created has its flaws, of course. How could it not when there are only 50 restaurants (100 actually; see below) in the world’s most populated region? To use Bangkok as an example, there are scores of many outstanding restaurants that were once on the list, but aren’t any longer.
That doesn’t mean those restaurants aren’t worth dining at. Indeed, some of them are our favourite Bangkok restaurants. But restaurants come and go into fashion, some restaurants have a higher profile than others, others choose to remain below the radar.
And let’s face it: all voters can’t eat everywhere. Ordinarily a challenge, the pandemic made that even more difficult. I wonder how many voters on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy got to Cambodia, for example? Because there are restaurants in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh that are just as good as restaurants on the list.
Vietnam is another interesting example. At #40, Anan Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City is very well deserving of its place and being crowned Vietnam’s best restaurant. It’s incredibly creative with a buzzy atmosphere and one of our favourite restaurants in Vietnam. But we have another favourite just as deserving and that’s TUNG in Hanoi.
It would be fab to see both restaurants on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Yet there are only so many places on the list and far more voters get to Ho Chi Minh City, which is Vietnam’s Bangkok, an increasingly glam and more cosmopolitan city than the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
Regardless of those flaws, the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list and its regional editions have more integrity than Trip Advisor, and its voters a greater sense of ethics and responsibility than Michelin. Industry knowledge plays a part in that, of course.
Another example from Thailand to illustrate my point: a Bangkok fine dining restaurant known by those in-the-know to treat staff poorly and not pay invoices fell off Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list, despite continuing to produce good food. Yet it remains in the Michelin guide and is still covered by media.
Food writers, restaurant critics and Michelin inspectors don’t always hear what’s going on in restaurant kitchens in the way that chefs, restaurateurs and sommeliers do. And how a restaurant treats the people who are serving your food should be as important as what is on your plate.
So here are the best restaurants in Asia for 2023 according to voters of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List – although we’re also sharing the 51-100 list. Yes, there’s another list announced before the big awards ceremony, so, yep it should really be Asia’s 100 Best Restaurants list.
For now, I’m just sharing the list(s), but we’ll insert links to all restaurants and provide more information soon, so do bookmark this page. We also welcome your restaurant recommendations in the comments at the end of this post.
Best Restaurants in Asia for 2023 According to Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List
Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List 1-50
1 Le Du, Bangkok
2 Sézanne, Tokyo
3 Nusara, Bangkok
4 Den, Tokyo
5 Gaggan Anand, Bangkok
6 Odette, Singapore
7 Florilège, Tokyo
8 La Cime, Osaka
9 Sorn, Bangkok
10 Narisawa, Tokyo
11 Labyrinth, Singapore
12 Sazenka, Tokyo
13 The Chairman, Hong Kong
14 Villa Aida, Wakayama
15 Mosu, Seoul
16 Masque, Mumbai
17 Meta, Singapore
18 Fu He Hui, Shanghai
19 Indian Accent, New Delhi
20 Ode, Tokyo
21 Zén, Singapore
22 Sühring, Bangkok
23 Onjium, Seoul
24 Burnt Ends, Singapore
25 Euphoria, Singapore
26 Cloudstreet, Singapore
27 Les Amis, Singapore
28 Mingles, Seoul
29 Neighborhood, Hong Kong
30 Avartana, Chennai
31 Ensue, Shenzhen
32 Cenci, Kyoto
33 Ms Maria & Mr Singh, Bangkok
34 Da Vittorio, Shanghai
35 Potong, Bangkok
36 Born, Singapore
37 Wing, Hong Kong
38 Raan Jay Fai, Bangkok
39 Wing Lei Palace, Macau
40 Anan Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City
41 Mono, Hong Kong
42 Toyo Eatery, Manila
43 Sichuan Moon, Macau
44 L’Effervescence, Tokyo
45 Mume, Taipei
46 Baan Tepa, Bangkok
47 Born & Bred, Seoul
48 Metiz, Makati
49 Caprice, Hong Kong
50 Refer, Beijing
Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List 51-100
Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List is actually a list of 100 best restaurants in Asia, because at some point the organisers felt 50 restaurants wasn’t enough and it was easier than rebranding to Asia’s 100 Best Restaurants List.
51 Joo Ok, Seoul
52 Bukhara, New Delhi
53 Ta Vie, Hong Kong
54 Yong Fu, Hong Kong
55 7th Door, Seoul
56 Thevar, Singapore
57 Logy, Taipei
58 Jade Dragon, Macau
59 Jin Sha, Hangzhou
60 L’évo, Toyama
61 Ando, Hong Kong
62 Estro, Hong Kong
63 Lolla, Singapore
64 Sugita, Tokyo
65 Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet, Shanghai
66 Americano, Mumbai
67 Esquisse, Tokyo
68 Eatanic Garden at Josun Palace, Seoul
69 Ministry of Crab, Colombo
70 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana, Hong Kong
71 Côte by Mauro Colagreco, Bangkok
72 Wana Yook, Bangkok
73 Lerdtip Wanghin, Bangkok
74 Dewakan, Kuala Lumpur
75 Nihonryori RyuGin, Tokyo
76 Fu1015, Shanghai
77 Ling Long, Beijing
78 The Table, Mumbai
79 Eat and Cook, Kuala Lumpur
80 The Pizza Bar on 38th, Tokyo
81 Gaa, Bangkok
82 Samrub Samrub Thai, Bangkok
83 Nae:Um, Singapore
84 Jaan by Kirk Westaway, Singapore
85 Claudine, Singapore
86 Summer Pavilion, Singapore
87 Adachi Sushi, Taipei
88 Obscura, Shanghai
89 Meet the Bund, Shanghai
90 Été, Tokyo
91 Hommage, Tokyo
92 Golden Flower, Macau
93 Ekaa, Mumbai
94 Nadodi, Kuala Lumpur
95 August, Jakarta
96 Liberte, Kaohsiung
97 Sushi Hare, Hong Kong
98 Nahm, Bangkok
99 Xin Rong Ji, Hong Kong
100 Vea, Hong Kong
Image courtesy of World’s 50 Best Restaurants is a dish from Odette, Singapore, by Louisa Lim, named Asia’s Best Pastry Chef 2023.
Have you been to any of the best restaurants in Asia for 2023 according to voters of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List? Are there any restaurants that didn’t make the cut that you think should be on the list? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
