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A guide for diners and owners
Restaurant Lista follows the restaurants and cooks shaping how the world eats, with a special table set for Peru. Owners will also find a plain guide to being found — starting with a website guests can trust.
For owners
The restaurant business keeps getting more crowded. The useful response is to be distinct in public: in the room, on the plate, and on the one page you actually own.
People search a neighborhood, a dish, or your name. A site that states the address, the hours, the menu, and how to book answers that search in your words. A social post can disappear from a feed tomorrow. The website remains, and it is the page a map, a review, and a friend can all point to.
Computers, phones, and every other screen people carry should show the same restaurant. Photographs of real plates, a menu that can be read without pinching, and a reservation path that works with a thumb turn a glance into a table.
The site is where the chef has a name, the kitchen has a story, and the prices are plain. That is the impression people carry through the door. A famous cook raises the room's standing. So does an honest menu.
An email address, offered in exchange for something worth receiving, lets you write at Christmas, Easter, a birthday, or a quiet Tuesday. The relationship stays with the restaurant.
Advertise in the local newspaper. Plenty of people still choose dinner the old way, over coffee, on paper.
Open the accounts guests already use. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest carry a recommendation from one table to the next.
Post the offer, then ask guests to describe the night. A review in their words travels farther than a slogan.
Photograph the menu. A dish people can see is easier to want.
Put the generous offer on the quiet night. A slower Tuesday can carry a discount that Saturday cannot, with less strain on cash flow.
Mark the birthday. A free dessert, or a real welcome, is remembered. A large share of people already eat out on theirs.
Keep the list of guests who want news, and write when you actually have something to say.
Website creation
The section above is the case for a page the restaurant owns. Esteban is the person who builds it: the address, the hours, the menu, and a phone number a guest can actually use.
From the Restaurant Lista gallery
Houses this site has followed for years, placed against the latest lists from The 50.
Best of the Best
Lima, Peru · Virgilio Martínez and Pía León
In 2008 Virgilio Martínez opened Central to cook Peruvian ingredients with a modern hand. Pía León joined in 2009, became head chef, and with him built the restaurant named The World's Best Restaurant in 2023. It now sits in The 50's Best of the Best.
Best of the Best
Barcelona, Spain
Behind a façade that could belong to any tapas bar, the dining room opens past the kitchen into a long, playful meal. Little is what it first seems. Disfrutar was The World's Best Restaurant in 2024 and has joined the Best of the Best.
World No. 4 · 2025
Madrid, Spain · Dabiz Muñoz
Hedonistic, creative, unpredictable. Muñoz treats the Madrid room as a place to push what a restaurant can be. Diners come for a meal that refuses to sit still.
World No. 2 · 2025
Atxondo, Spain · Victor Arguinzoniz
A quiet Basque village between Bilbao and San Sebastián. Arguinzoniz cooks over wood and charcoal, and people cross the world for that fire. The restaurant's sommelier, Mohamed Benabdallah, was named The World's Best Sommelier in 2025.
World No. 10 · Latin America No. 3
Buenos Aires, Argentina · Pablo Rivero
A neighborhood parrilla on a Palermo corner grew into a reference for Argentine beef, regenerative cattle farming, and a cellar of tens of thousands of bottles. It is The Best Restaurant in Argentina for 2025.
World No. 1 · 2025
Lima, Peru · Mitsuharu Tsumura
The name is a Japanese greeting, and it is the first word guests hear. Tsumura cooks Nikkei: Japanese technique, Peruvian ingredients, and a menu that keeps turning toward the Amazon.
Latin America No. 25
São Paulo, Brazil · Jefferson and Janaína Rueda
House of the Pig, in Portuguese. The Ruedas built the restaurant around pork, fire, and the butcher's trade, and they also serve a vegetarian menu that is taken as seriously as the original.
The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2025
Maido, in Lima's Miraflores, is The World's Best Restaurant 2025 and The Best Restaurant in South America, in the list published by The 50. Chef Mitsuharu “Micha” Tsumura opened it in 2009. His family story in Peru reaches back to Japanese immigrants in 1889. He trained in the United States and in Osaka, then built a Nikkei kitchen that changes with the season and, more and more, with the Amazon: paiche, palm heart, yuca, beans from the forest.
The tasting menu runs past ten courses. An à la carte menu keeps dishes the room refused to retire, among them a beef nigiri in the Peruvian “a lo pobre” spirit. Guests are greeted with the word that names the restaurant. Maido has been Latin America's best four times. On 4 November 2026, in its own city, it joins the Best of the Best and leaves the numbered list.
San Martín 399, Miraflores, Lima · Profile on The 50
01
Nikkei cooking, from the coast to the Amazon. The World's Best Restaurant and the best in South America.
02
A destination grill in a Basque valley. Wood, charcoal, and produce treated with unusual patience.
03
Contemporary Mexican cooking by Vallejo, with hospitality led by Alejandra Flores. Much of the produce travels about thirty meters, from garden to plate. Best Restaurant in North America.
04
A pleasure house for a chef who keeps moving the boundary of the meal. Creative, crowded with ideas, and deliberately hard to predict.
These four led the list announced in Turin on 19 June 2025. Alchemist in Copenhagen followed at No. 5. The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2026 will be revealed in Lima on 4 November 2026. Restaurants that have been No. 1, including Maido, Central, and Disfrutar, are no longer eligible for a new numbered ranking.
Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants 2025
A separate academy votes this regional list. It was announced in Antigua Guatemala on 2 December 2025. The first four restaurants are all in South America.
01
The Best Restaurant in Latin America, and the first Colombian restaurant to hold that place. Clavijo cooks contemporary Colombian food with producers he has known for years. The menu moves with their harvest: heart of palm, yacon, crab, aged corn. The name is a Bogotá word of affection.
02
The Best Restaurant in Peru, and winner of the Art of Hospitality Award. León, formerly head chef of Central, opened Kjolle in 2018 and cooks directly from Peru's pantry. It is also No. 9 in the world.
03
The Best Restaurant in Argentina. More than twenty-five years after Rivero opened the parrilla, the beef is still raised for the restaurant, aged and butchered in house, and poured beside a deep Argentine cellar. No. 10 in the world.
04
In Barranco, Martínez cooks Peru with memories of Venezuela, where he was born. Andean curry, arracacha, cocona, and mango share the menu with a serious cocktail list. No. 26 in the world.
Click a country
The coast cures fish in citrus and chile. The Andes cook tubers, corn, and meats in earth ovens. The Amazon brings river fish, plantain, and fruits most menus still have to introduce. Nikkei and chifa — Japanese and Chinese kitchens that became Peruvian — sit beside that map. The longer account, including Gastón Acurio, is in Peruvian Cuisine.
Italian cooking is a set of local agreements: which pasta belongs to which valley, which oil, which tomato, which Sunday sauce. The trattoria remains a model for any owner. A short menu, a room that feels inhabited, and a dish repeated until it is unmistakable will outlast a concept that changes every season.
Corn, chile, and the milpa still organize the cuisine, from a market antojito to a tasting menu. Quintonil in Mexico City, No. 3 in the world for 2025, cooks with produce grown steps from the kitchen and with techniques the country already knew. The lesson for a dining room anywhere: know the ingredient before you rename it.
Spain holds two ideas of greatness at once. Asador Etxebarri, No. 2 in the world, is a grill in a green valley, faithful to fire and product. Diverxo, No. 4, is a Madrid room built for surprise. Tapas remain the social format in between: small plates, shared, and priced so a table can stay.
The people at the pass
A restaurant's prestige travels with the cooks who sign the plates. These are figures Restaurant Lista has followed, including awards that belong to their year.
Maido, Lima · The World's Best Restaurant 2025
Tsumura took Nikkei cooking from a family history and made it a global reference. Peers named him the Estrella Damm Chefs' Choice in 2024, the year before Maido reached No. 1.
Central, Lima · The World's Best Chef 2017
The British magazine Restaurant named him the world's best chef in 2017, after Central had been Latin America's best in 2016. He is known for modern technique applied to indigenous Peruvian ingredients. Central, in Miraflores, was The World's Best Restaurant in 2023. With Pía León and the Mater research group, he also stands behind Mil in Moray.
Kjolle, Lima
León joined Central in 2009, led the kitchen, and in 2018 opened Kjolle under her own name. The restaurant is The Best Restaurant in Peru for 2025 and won the Art of Hospitality Award. Her plates treat color and native produce as the point, not the garnish.
Leo, Bogotá · Latin America's Best Female Chef 2017
Espinosa received that award in Bogotá on 24 October 2017. She is known for Colombian ingredients used with unusual imagination. At Leo, a menu has included seared tuna with crushed ants, and camu camu with carne oreada from Santander. Leo is No. 23 on the 2025 regional list. An economist and artist by training, she treats the dining room as a cultural argument.
El Chato, Bogotá
Clavijo trained in Paris, Barcelona, at Per Se, L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, and Noma, then built a relaxed Bogotá bistro that became Latin America's best in 2025. The relationships with farmers decide the menu.
Ambassador of Peruvian gastronomy
Acurio spent decades making Peruvian cooking legible to the rest of the world, through restaurants, television, books, and the Mistura festival. His story is told in full in the next section.
The kitchen is the prestige. Guests remember a cook they can name. These presentation ideas come from Restaurant Lista's own notes to owners, including how a plate should look when it lands.
Coast, Andes, Amazon
Peru's cooking is three geographies that share a market. The Pacific, the highlands, and the forest do not taste alike, and the national cuisine is the conversation among them — plus the Chinese and Japanese kitchens that became local.
Ceviche is the dish the world learned first: fish cured briefly in citrus, with ají, onion, sweet potato, and cancha. Tiradito is the cousin cut in the Japanese manner, with less onion and a sharper sauce. Inland, the canon includes ají de gallina, causa, anticuchos, rocoto relleno, lomo saltado from the chifa tradition, pachamanca from the earth oven, and juane from the forest.
Cold water, chile, and citrus. Cevicherías set the rhythm of lunch. Lime, ají limo, and the day's fish matter more than a long recipe.
Hundreds of potatoes, corn, quinoa, and meats cooked with the altitude in mind. Central, Kjolle, and Mil built modern menus by taking this larder seriously.
Paiche, plantain, cocona, and fruits that rarely travel well. Maido's recent menus treat the Amazon as a source, not a garnish.
Dishes to know
Subsection
Gastón Acurio is the chef who became the public ambassador of Peruvian gastronomy. He trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, then returned to Lima and, in 1994, opened Astrid y Gastón with his wife, the pastry chef Astrid Gutsche. What began as a fine-dining room grew into an argument: Peruvian cooking was precise enough, regional enough, and generous enough to travel under its own name.
He carried that argument in public. Restaurants such as La Mar took the cebichería abroad. Books and television lessons put ají, causa, and the market vocabulary into home kitchens far from Lima. The Mistura festival, which he championed, put producers and regional cooks in front of the city. Astrid y Gastón remains on the extended Latin America list, at No. 81 in 2025. La Mar, now led by Anthony Vásquez, is No. 26 on the main regional list.
The useful part of his example, for any owner, is the insistence that a cuisine is a group project. A restaurant promotes itself by naming the farmer, the region, and the cook — and by building a page where a stranger can learn those names before they book.
Learn the hand, then the menu
Cooking Classes introduces the dishes. The class itself is taught by a working kitchen. The listing names the chef, the city, and the plate you cook.
Book this class
La Cocina Peruana Miami teaches a private Peruvian class: fish, leche de tigre, and a menu set for the group.
lacocinaperuanamiami.com/private-cooking-classes
How to choose fish, mix a leche de tigre, and decide when the cure should stop. Sweet potato, corn, onion, and two chiles. The second plate is tiradito, cut thinner, with a Nikkei-leaning sauce.
Japanese technique with a Peruvian market: rice seasoned properly, a beef nigiri in the “a lo pobre” spirit, and a small fried-rice dish that nods to chaufa. Inspired by the idea behind Maido, not a copy of its menu.
The steakhouse logic of Don Julio and the wood-fire patience of Etxebarri, scaled to a home grill. Salt, rest, heat, and a salad that can stand next to the meat. Sauces stay on the side.
Restaurant Lista's plating notes, practiced. Clear the rim. Build color. Match the portion from plate to plate. Put the sauce in a spoon or a small bowl. The class ends with a photograph good enough for a website.
A look, not a menu claim
Editorial photographs for atmosphere. They illustrate the subjects on this site. They are not official pictures from the restaurants.
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