All in good taste

Every year around this time, food lovers get into heated, but ultimately futile, discussions following the release of the annual San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants list, published by Restaurant Magazine. This year, Francophiles were upset that the top restaurant in France, Le Chateaubriand, came in at number 11. Four of the top 10 spots were restaurants in Spain, but the famed El Bulli was toppled from first place - which it had held for the past four years - by Noma, a small restaurant in Denmark (foodies in that country were ecstatic).

To get an idea of what the results would have been if the panellists consisted only of Hong Kong voters, we took a poll of local food lovers - seasoned restaurateurs, food bloggers and gourmands who travel the world in search of good restaurants - to pick the places they consider 'best', using the same parameters as the San Pellegrino guide (see sidebar).

Much to my surprise, I found there was little consensus. It was obvious from the choices which countries the voters had travelled to recently - one of the rules is they had to have visited the restaurant in the past 18 months.

But even with the pick of local restaurants, where I expected quite a lot of overlap, there was just one repeat nominee - Fook Lam Moon, the upmarket Chinese restaurant known as the 'tycoon's canteen' - and both voters chose the Wan Chai branch (which is considered to have the better food). And while voters could choose up to three restaurants in Hong Kong, only one did so.

Food blogger Peter Chang says: 'I just don't think [local] restaurants are as good as those I found elsewhere. It's not the service, it's the food - some of them can be hit and miss. Fook Lam Moon is consistent - whether or not you're a regular. If you're not a regular there, you won't know about the special, off-menu items but it's still good.

'For me, being the best has to do with creativity - the food has to be good, but what impresses me is when they have new dishes and new ways of doing things. All my top picks are creative - they experiment; they serve the tried and true, but they also serve dishes with the 'wow' factor. A lot of Chinese restaurants don't have that.'

One of the rules is that panellists could vote for no more than three in our 'region' of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan - but Judy Yu was the only panellist to pick the maximum number.