Something for the Weekend #21
The UAE wins BIG at the 2025 The Best Chef Awards. Kraken is coming. The Italian Project hits the bricks. Eats, writes and more. So sit back & enjoy a little Something for the Weekend #21.
The Best Chef Awards 2025.
Another year, another awards show. The Best Chef Awards 2025 took place in Milan. The Best Chef Awards does not clarify its purpose on the website’s concentric, convoluted word salad.
As simply as I can describe it, The Best Chef Awards does two things: it ranks and rates individual chefs and hands out individual awards in special categories.
Notably, it awards the chefs, not the restaurants—a notable departure from Michelin and the World’s 50 Best (although I can hear bellows from the cheap seats about some recent individual chef awards in both).
How does The Best Chef Awards work?
According to The Best Chef website:
The number of voters has increased to 972, comprising 572 chefs and 400 professionals from various sectors, including food journalism and gastronomy. This broader base ensures a more diverse and representative reflection of the global culinary landscape.
Chefs are ranked using a “Tiered Recognition System” symbolised with Knives.
Three Knives (THE BEST): Awarded to chefs who achieve 80% or more of the maximum possible points, reflecting top-tier culinary mastery.
Two Knives (WORLD CLASS): Awarded to chefs scoring 40% or more, indicating internationally recognised excellence.
One Knife (EXCELLENT): Awarded to chefs with scores of 20% or more, acknowledging a high standard of culinary skill.
Thoughts and observations
Many of my thoughts are the same as last year with Courtney Brandt and Pallavi Sangtani.
Chefs deserve awards. Chefs work damn hard. Harder than most, and I am here to celebrate an industry I respect and admire tremendously.
The Best Chef Awards lean more “by chefs, for chefs”. I have no qualms with a bit of peer recognition in a world of Joe Public via social media, Google Maps, TripAdvisor (hiss), etc.
The Best Chefs Awards do not matter to you and me. Diners won’t care, nor will they make dining choices based on The Best Chef Awards—and that’s also fine.
I would love to know how much bartering and trading happens behind the scenes, especially between the chefs.
Some Special Category Awards are nonsense. Best Terroir? The Best Origins & Future Award? Science? Are they just trying to hand out awards?
It awards some chefs who may not get the spotlight. Most markets do not purchase the Michelin or Gault & Millau rights, especially remote markets. Many chefs are not featured on any World 50 Best Restaurants Lists or regional lists. The Best Chef may be their only international acknowledgement.
Middle East & North Africa wins BIG! I did somersaults for Team MENA, who won big with 21 chefs featured (vs 9 last year). The UAE is home to 15 winning chefs.
Special Awards: Himanshu Saini (UAE), Voted by my Professionals.
Chefs’ Top 3: Himanshu Saini (UAE).
Team Three Knives: Mohamed Orfali (UAE), Himanshu Saini (UAE),
Team Two Knives: Vladimir Mukhin (UAE), Torsten Vildgaard (UAE), Hisao Ueda & Takashi Namekata (UAE), Jason Atherton & Daniel Birk (UAE), Mostafa Seif (Egypt), Salam Daqqaq (UAE).
Team One Knife: Abhiraj Khatwani (UAE), Brando Morros (UAE), Driss Alaoui (Morocco), Gabriela Chamorro (UAE), Hassan Mezal (Jordan), Issam Rhachi (Morocco), Karim Ben Baba (Morocco), Kelvin Cheung (UAE), Rahul Rana (UAE), Solemann Haddad (UAE) and Tarek Alameldine (Lebanon).
Prateek Sadhu. I was delighted to see Prateek acknowledged in the New Entrant award. I visited his Restaurant Naar about this time last year. The audacity of this endeavour deserves praise, and this award is even more heartening.
A word about Himanshu, Riccardo and Gabriela. Himanshu (Tresind Studio) and Gabriela (Girl and the Goose) are friends. It warms the place where my heart would be to see them among the greats. Himanshu continues to lead the charge for modern Indian cuisine with his signature humility and kindness. Gabriela has soared from supper club to busy restaurant (see below). This award is a testament to her graft. Riccardo’s charm and talent command my complete respect and admiration. Readers will know that his Lido 84 is my Valhalla.
If you are interested in reading more, check out… The Best Chef Awards full list here, comments about the 2024 Awards, my write-up about Restaurant Naar, Tresind Studio, Restaurant FZN, TakaHisa and Jun’s.
The Italian Project hits an issue.
Back in Dubai, we are no longer overseeing the house renovation work directly. Imagine our horror to receive a message that the flooring in the kitchen revealed a problem.
The basement ceiling is what is known as a barrel vault ceiling—a scalloped terracotta brick with metal struts.
The ground floor is Phase I for renovations. Beneath the ground floor lies the basement. Our builders pulled up the ground-floor kitchen tiles to find the basement’s metal struts immediately beneath the tile (somewhat unexpected, although consistent with last week’s reported issue), and, worse, the metal struts are rusted to a state of near decomposition. It looks like burnt, soaked and smashed wood. See here.
We found out on Friday night.
We do not yet know what this means for the renovation, but my savings are already throbbing.
Woosah. Positive. Mental. Attitude.
Kraken.
Chef Gregoire Berger opens Kraken on 17 October. Kraken focuses on seafood (perhaps obvious), sourcing much of its seafood locally, according to Gregoire. He was the head chef at Ossiano for many years before departing in December 2024. I am excited for Gregoire, and I cannot wait to face the Kraken up close, as this also announces Gregoire’s return to the market.
If you’re interested, read our swan song to Gregoire when he left Ossiano.
Eat.
Girl and the Goose. I nipped over Girl and the Goose last Sunday—a Mesoamerican restaurant in the Anantara Downtown Dubai led by chef Gabriella Chamorro (now with One Knive!). Hurrah for an original restaurant concept in Dubai, something in short supply, it seems. Highlights: seabass in a cucumber aguachile with orange zest, black olives and jalapeño sorbet (refreshing, olives are inspired and subtle, grassy mild heat from the jalapeños); Omani reef cod with a cloud-like sweet corn espuma and a Pinol, a nutty, sticky sauce with a gentle heat. Would I return? I can’t wait.
WAWA Dining. A restaurant that eluded me over the years, but I met a former colleague here for dinner. It’s a very casual, reasonably-priced Japanese-Korean restaurant in Al Barsha. Thoughts: the decor is kitsch but easily overlooked. The otoro nigiri was chewy (poorly cut), and frankly, everything tastes the same (pickles, ramen, sushi). Would I return? Hmm...
Writing.
I published a restaurant review this week about La Bottiglieria del Ruché, an enoteca in Monferrato, where the food left a lot to be desired, so I also mentioned three other nearby restaurants and enotecas, which you may want to consider first.
If you’re interested, read about it here.
Great Substack Reads.
Courtney Brandt’s celebrates 5 years on Substack with 7000+ subscribers this weekend.
The Usuals.
You can find out more about me here, together with my Substack page.
Flick through my Dubai Restaurant Guide here.
Find weekend inspo in one of Dubai’s best breakfast spots.
Visit the best spots in Jumeirah Lakes Towers and Dubai Hills, two Dubai dining IYKYK hotspots IMO.
Some of the world’s Greatest Dining Spaces.
Find me on Substack, Threads, Instagram, BlueSky or Facebook.
Liam is a restaurant critic, food and travel writer based in the Middle East. He owns EatGoSee and contributes to other publications.
I'm loving the great chefs that we know that won. But man, i find these lists hard to enjoy fully. I can't deny the brilliance of Rasmus and Himanshu etc., but there's some sensational chefs that I know well, especially in the UK and Dubai that are supremely talented, and do things with food, seasoning, balance, and innovation that others can only dream of. How do they get missed? What do they need to do to make the list? I fear that the answer is an uncomfortable one.
Ah I spied Wawa recently and thought it looked great! Shall probably give it a miss then...