Foodie Top 100 List Unfurls, Minus 11 MadPark

          With originality, audacity, and aptness of thought, Samir Arora, the digital visionary behind Glam Media Inc., revealed the company’s inaugural Foodie Top 100 Restaurants of the World yesterday and announced that its first print guidebook will be out in fall, distributed by Chronicle Books. Yes. From digital to print. Click here for a look at the book.

          Glam Media, the internet giant you may not know, is #1 globally in lifestyle, reaching more than 297 million monthly unique users, as measured by comScore. Its advertising revenue is bigger than Vogue’s. Last year it launched foodie.com, where its top 100 lists appeared yesterday.

          Unsurprisingly, you’ll find Le Bernardin, Jean Georges, Daniel, The French Laundry, L’Ambroisie, Louis XV, Pierre Gagnaire, Kitcho Arashiyama, and Iggy’s among the global stars.

          Who’s missing?  Eleven Madison Park, some might say.

          As a Foodie editorial consultant, I worked on the list. Besides my nominees, the Foodie top tables were compiled from the nominations of Patricia Wells (France), Masuhiro Yamamoto (Japan), Ruth Reichl (USA), Jonathan Gold (USA), Bruno Verjus (France), Alexander Lobrano (France), Charles Campion (United Kingdom), Vir Sanghvi (India), Aun Koh (Singapore/China) Susumu Ohta (Japan), Kundo Koyama (Japan), Glam Media’s Samir Arora (Publisher & Editor), Yuki Yamamura (Japan) with Erika Lenkert (Managing Executive Editor). 

          We were asked to choose restaurants from our home turf and favorites from elsewhere. The rules required restaurants to have been visited in the past 18 months and no free meals. No one could nominate a restaurant they were linked to professionally in any way.

          If some of your local favorites are missing, you might find them on the USA top 100 list.  You can also access the lists for France, Japan and a list that covers Europe, the United Kingdom, and the Asia-Pacific region. Click here to see the full selection.

          Foodie.com is already drawing 19.7 million unique visitors per month, and lets visitors save recipes easily with the foodie bookmarklet.  Last year foodie was declared a toxic food word, banned in all seriousness by Serious Eats. Maybe now Foodies will get more respect. Click here to view the press release.

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Photographs of the egg-on-egg sandwich at Jean Georges, Eric Ripert and Maggie Le Coze of Le Bernardin, the fois gras and truffle dish from L'ambroisie, and Jean-Georges doing his egg trick, may not be used without permission of Gael Greene.  Copyright 2013.

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