There's a New 'World's Best' Restaurant

Many of the world's top chefs, restaurateurs, and other culinary big-shots gathered in New York on Monday night for a ceremony celebrating the release of the much-anticipated annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants List. This year, a new champion has claimed the ranking's No. 1 spot, which apparently, makes it the best restaurant on the planet.

After taking second place for the last two years, Chef Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, has taken the top spot on the highly regarded (and sometimes controversial) list for the first time. The tiny contemporary Italian restaurant trades spaces on the ranking with last year's winner, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain -- with Eleven Madison Park in New York, Central in Lima, and Noma in Copenhagen rounding out the top five.

Osteria Francescana and Buttura are known for "reinventing, subverting, and improving" the super-conservative traditional Italian culinary standards, according to the restaurant's profile on 50 Best Restaurants list. Highlighted dishes include things like the "Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano," which showcases the cheese with various textures, temperatures, and flavors, as well as "Autumn in New York," a dish that highlights international influences (Buttura's wife is American) with pickled and preserved fall vegetables that are combined with a mineral broth, dried mushrooms, and pumpkin concentrate.

And as Eater points out, Osteria Francescana is one of the hardest places to get a table in all of Italy. As you can imagine, this latest honor probably won't help, at least in that regard.

Check out the full World’s 50 Best Restaurants List, including photos, at the list's official website. In the meantime, here's the top 10:

10.Asador Etxebarri - Axpe, Spain
9.Steirereck - Vienna, Austria
8.Narisawa - Tokyo, Japan
7. Mugaritz - San Sebastian, Spain
6.Mirazur - Menton, France
5.Noma - Copenhagen, Denmark
4.Central - Lima, Peru
3.Eleven Madison Park - New York, USA
2.El Celler de Can Roca - Girona, Spain
1.Osteria Francescana - Modena, Italy

Last week, the organization released its "back fifty" list, which notably included Chef Thomas Keller's Per Se and French Laundry restaurants (instead of the top 50 list). You can check out that list right here. And as always, have fun trying to get a table at these place, folks. Oh, and affording the food...