Spanish Chef Martín Berasategui Slams World's 50 Best

Yesterday the Spanish chef Martín Berasategui issued blunt criticisms of the World's 50 Best list to the Basque publication Deia. The 2012 edition of the list was announced on Monday.

Berasategui, whose eponymous restaurant in Lasarte holds three Michelin stars, calls the World's 50 Best list "rigged" and "a staging." He says that Restaurant Magazine, which curates the list, is unqualified for the undertaking, mainly because they "don't have a budget" to travel around the world and eat at all the restaurants they vote on. "The only thing they have a budget for," Berasategui said, "is for the party in London."

The chef claims that the list has been designed to do harm to Michelin and urges Ferran Adrià, who called the event the most important in all of gastronomy, "to tell the truth."

Last year when his restaurant was ranked 29th, Berasategui also criticized the list publicly. At the time, the chef said, "Show me the receipts from the restaurants they have eaten in, show me the receipts of the hotels they've stayed at, the receipts for the planes, the trains."

This year, he's been demoted to to the 67th spot.

· Martín Berasategui califica de montaje la lista de "Restaurant" [Deia]
· All World's 50 Best Coverage on Eater [-E-]
· All Martín Berasategui Coverage on Eater [-E-]