Page 84 - Hospitality Horizon Oct-Nov 2025_FLIP FINAL ISSUE

tasting the world

Going back in time to revisit the World’s Best of the Best

By Rashmi Uday Singh

ou (yes, you) who is reading this, is holding an and exploring Mumbai’s restaurants. Which is why I wrote
open invitation to join me and share my India’s first city restaurant guide (initially rejected by three
insider’s tips and experiences of the “World’s publishers) before Tariq Ansari of Midday finally published
Best of the Best”. I’ve been blessed (no better it. It was on the national bestseller list... not because it
word) to be privileged to dine at these was a great book but because there was no internet. Now
Yworld-renowned restaurants. Before we you know what I mean by I feel blessed? This happens
begin, please allow me to serve up an... again and again. My Columbus instinct surfaces again,
when I write the world’s first vegetarian guide to Paris
APERITIVO (and got knighted by the French government).
Serving up a tiny intro never done this before, but making One day I got a phone call (on the land line phone,
an exception for Hospitality Horizon and its publisher, the there were no cell phones then). “Call from London. Hi!
brilliant and affable Shafquat Ali, who I am blessed to This is Victoria Prior from the ‘World’s 50 Best’. We would
know for over a decade. He binds our hospitality industry be very happy if you would accept our invitation to be
together like no one else does. He does this with chairperson of the Indian subcontinent and come to
panache across multiple platforms, from print to awards London for our board meeting.”
to events. And he does so with aplomb. Everyone discouraged me: “Don't go, it’s a scam.” I
Rewind to... after studying journalism in the Bombay went because I love adventure. By this time I’d been
University, I miraculously passed the IAS exam and as invited by Meenakshi Shedde of The Times of India to
1977 batch IRS I worked for 15 years. Resigned as start a weekly column for The Independent which later
Commissioner of Tax. Right through (in between passing became Bombay Times. Grateful to her, and I am forever
assessment orders of TISCO, TELCO, Lata Mangeshkar grateful to Aroon Purie owner, Editor-in-Chief of the India
and builders and going on Income Tax raids) I studied Today Group who flew down to Mumbai and got me
LLB, Masters in Management and continued freelancing started on my TV career. And so I trained with the BBC
and filmed food and restaurants in France, Monaco,
Germany et al. And so began my blessed journey.
Please excuse the blasphemy, but The very first, World’s 50 Best awards were held in (hold
you tell me, if dining at Ferran Adrià’s
El Bulli isn’t a pilgrimage, what is? your breath) The London Science museum. It was in the
subsequent years that the awards were held in London’s
800-year-old Guildhall. I still recall how the air was so
thick with suspense that I could’ve sliced it and popped it
into my champagne flute.
Superstars of the culinary world who had air-dashed
from all over the world were sitting on edge as the
glittering Oscars of global dining ‘The San Pellegrino
World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ awards were in progress.
The Spanish wizard Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli was crowned
the world’s best over and over again. Isabelle, his English-
speaking wife translated for me.

PILGRIMAGE TO EL BULLI... THE WORLDS’ BEST FOR
4 YEARS
Please excuse the blasphemy, but you tell me, if this isn’t
a pilgrimage, what is? Rewind to 2007…
My heart pounds to the rhythm of the Grand Elipsos

84 OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2025 hospitality horizon www.hospitality-horizon.com