Where's the Asian in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants?

ANYWHERE in the world, trying to rate restaurants relative to each other is going to be a prickly affair. So it didn't take long for feathers to be ruffled over David Thompson's topping the Asia's 50 Best Awards with his Bangkok restaurant Nahm earlier this week.

"The no 1 restaurant in the 50 Best Asia list belongs to a white Australian guy? I quit the org(anisation) for good reasons," tweeted Jay Rayner, restaurant critic for the Observer in the United Kingdom and former UK chair of the World's 50 Best Restaurant Academy of voters.

He added in a later post: "I'm sure Nahm is lovely, and David Thompson a great chef, but the whole ranking thing does throw up peculiar results."