PARIS — The last thing the food universe seems to need these days is another restaurant guide.
But the glut of guides hasn’t stopped France’s Foreign Ministry from compiling La Liste, an ambitious ranking of what it claims are the 1,000 best “tables of exception” in the world.
La Liste is based on an algorithm named Ciacco, the nickname of Dante’s gluttonous friend in “The Inferno,” and invented by Antoine Ribaut, a French-American computer systems architect. He drew on data from sources that included 200 food guides in 92 countries, such as Michelin, Gault & Millau and Zagat, and crowd-sourced sites like TripAdvisor and OpenTable.
A committee of experts, among them Jean-Robert Pitte, a French food and wine historian and geographer, and the German food journalist Jörg Zipprick, defined the criteria, including the quality of food, ambience, wine and spirits lists and service.
The cost of the initiative, about 300,000 euros ($329,000), was paid not with government money but by a dozen corporate sponsors led by Nestlé and Moët Hennessy.
La Liste will be unveiled formally by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at a ceremony honoring many of the chefs at the Quai d’Orsay on Dec. 17.
There are restaurants from 48 countries, with 126 in Japan, 118 in France and 101 in the United States. China has 69 restaurants on the list, 43 of them on the mainland; Spain, Germany and Italy each have more than 50.
The best restaurant in the world, according to La Liste, is in Switzerland: the chef Benoît Violier’s Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville, in a suburb of Lausanne. That is followed by Thomas Keller’s Per Se, in New York, in second place; Kenichiro Nishi’s Kyo Aji in Tokyo is third.
The top-ranking French restaurant is Guy Savoy in fourth place. The remainder of the top 10 includes two more French restaurants (Maison Troisgros in the Loire and Auberge du Vieux Puits in the Languedoc region); the French chef Joël Robuchon’s restaurant and Kyubey, both in Tokyo; Schauenstein in the Swiss Alps; and El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain.
“I feel a heavy responsibility to be named number one,” said Mr. Violier in a telephone interview.
Mr. Violier, a 44-year-old Frenchman, said that the key to the success of his 50-seat restaurant is consistency, not flash. Louis Villeneuve, his maître d’hôtel, for example, has been in his post for four decades.
“This ranking is a recognition of seriousness, of delivering the same fidelity and level of excellence from the beginning of January to the end of December,” Mr. Violier said. “It’s a great tribute to the team.”
La Liste can be seen as France’s unofficial response to the London-based World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, which has not been kind to restaurants in France in recent years. On this year’s list, no French restaurant made it into the top 10, and only four made it onto the list at all. (In the interest of fairness, data from the 50 Best list was included in the La Liste algorithm.)
Earlier this year, chefs and other industry professionals became more vocal in their criticism of the 50 Best list; in turn, the organization that produces the list has defended its voting system and methodology.
Philippe Faure, the French foreign ministry’s “gastro diplomat” in charge of the La Liste initiative, has openly criticized the 50 Best list as biased, corrupt and opaque, and has vowed to fight back.
With La Liste, he feels vindicated. “Our aim is to be serious and honest,” said Mr. Faure at a private lunch on Thursday. “There will be a lot of the best French chefs who will be very unhappy with their rankings. But no one can accuse us of favoring our own. In a short time, La Liste will become the global reference.”
La Liste’s Top 10 Restaurants in the World
1. Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville, Crissier, Switzerland
2. Per Se, New York
The top-ranking restaurant in France is Guy Savoy in Paris, in fourth place.CreditEd Alcock for The New York Times
3. Kyo Aji, Tokyo
4. Guy Savoy, Paris
5. Schauenstein, Fürstenau, Switzerland
6. El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain
7. Kyubey, Tokyo
8. La Maison Troisgros, Roanne, France
9. Auberge du Vieux Puits, Fontjoncouse, France
10. Joël Robuchon, Yebisu Garden Place, Japan
La Liste’s Top 20 Restaurants in the United States
1. Per Se, New York
2. Le Bernardin, New York
3. Jean-Georges, New York
4. Eleven Madison Park, New York
5. Joël Robuchon (USA), Las Vegas
6. Saison, San Francisco
7. The Restaurant at Meadowood, St. Helena, Calif.
8. Atera, New York
9. The French Laundry, Yountville, Calif.
10. Daniel, New York
11. Grace, Chicago
12. Alinea, Chicago
13. 42 Grams, Chicago
14. Benu, San Francisco
15. Manresa, Los Gatos, Calif.
16. Melisse, Santa Monica, Calif.
17. Ichimura, New York
18. Blanca, New York
19. Momofuku Ko, New York
20. Masa, New York
