Why There Isn’t a Best Chef in the World

Unlike tennis and other sports, though, the world of haute cuisine doesn’t really have a universally recognized ranking system.

Peruvian chef Mitsuharu Tsumura, also known as Micha, poses for a picture at the kitchen of Maido high-cuisine restaurant in Lima, on June 24, 2025. Maido, a restaurant in Peru founded by chef Mitsuharu "Micha" Tsumura, was on June 19, 2025, named the best eatery in the world for 2025 by the influential but controversial World's 50 Best Restaurants list. Juan Carlos Cisneros/AFP/Getty Images/TNS

By Howard Chua-Eoan Bloomberg Opinion

In victory, top chefs are much like the classiest of professional tennis players: self-deprecatory, admiring of their rivals, grateful to their teachers. A few weeks ago, just after his restaurant Maido was proclaimed No. 1 among the 50 Best Restaurants in the World at a ceremony in Turin, Italy, Mitsuharu Tsumura told me, “There is competition, but when you finish, you shake hands, you have a beer.”