[imagesource: StockFood / Syndication Bazaar / House & Leisure]

Remember Paternoster’s ever-popular restaurant Wolfgat, which just snuck in at 50th on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2021 list?

Somehow, Kobus van der Merwe’s little culinary pearl has been knocked further down the list this year.

In fact, quite a few restaurants across the world have been shuffled around.

The list was decried for being controversial last year – repeatedly putting one restaurant at the top, only including a single restaurant from the whole continent of Africa, and not a single one from India (a country with 1,38 billion people) – so perhaps they’ve made some necessary changes.

This year’s list has a few first-timers, including an addition from India. Only the 51–100 ranking has been released, so we will only really be able to tell when the top 50 list is revealed on July 18.

Anyway, we can be proud of the fact that two local eateries have made the cut on the 51–100 list.

While Wolfgat came in at 90th on the global rankings list, La Colombe landed in 56th:

Image: Facebook / La Colombe Restaurant

Eat Out wrote that it made sense for the Silvermist wine estate restaurant to be so highly ranked as “Chef James Gaag’s flair for theatrics and creativity is unmatched”.

Robb Report has more on the list’s major shakeup:

Nine restaurants that made the top 50 last year have fallen to the second-tier list, a shake-up that seems more dramatic than usual as only three restaurants suffered similar fates with the 2021 list as published.

Most notably, New York’s Cosme, which had been the highest-ranked restaurant in the United States since 2019, fell from No. 22 last year all the way down to No. 69. (No list was released in 2020.)

The steepest drop-off, however, was experienced by San Francisco’s Benu, which tumbled from No. 28 to No. 97, just barely making the cut this year (of course, Corey Lee’s newest place is our Best New Restaurant of the Year).

These spots will certainly leave room for new restaurants to gain accolades when the 50 Best are announced.

William Drew, the director of content for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, did say that “with restaurants across six continents, the 51-100 list this year recognizes a broader range of destinations than we have ever seen before”.

 

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You can check out the full ranking of the 51 through 100 here.

Now we wait with bated breath for the top 50 to be revealed on July 18.

[sources:eatout&robbreport]