Hence, he started working on his magazine. At that time the most English issues were bleak, had poor content and design, and overall were difficult to read. Whereas Joe and his team wanted to make their magazine standing out from others. Three editors worked on the magazine (including Joe). One day they came up with idea of making the list of the best British restaurants that during their discussion grew to the idea of listing the best world’s restaurants. Thus, “50 Best Restaurants” Award emerged.
Joe personally curated this list. Throughout 2002 they held meetings with various restaurant business’ representatives that were asked to name their five favorite restaurants and the reasons of their choice. Originally, this section was planned for drawing attention to the magazine than for usefulness and informativeness of its content.
Till 2007 this idea turned into a very serious event that was attended by the best chefs and restaurateurs all over the world. Now, Joe Warwick confesses that they have discovered this idea by sheer accident and it had a blast due to its timeliness and relevance. Joe recalls that back then he was puzzled by such serious perception of the restaurant list since everybody carefully related to the restaurant ranking distribution, which was not based on any specific criteria.
Hence, he started thinking how to distribute the places in a more correct and uniformed way. In this way, there was introduced a classification system that was grounded in restaurant gradation according to the region.
If to compare with Michelin star awarding, they have more strict and specific criteria that can be debated about. However, regarding “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list, it is based on the popularity of given establishment within customers. Thus, the restaurant that has held the 14th place last year could hold 42 place next year.
Currently, Joe is on two things. One of them is a book “Where Chefs Eat”, the new issue of which was released in March 2018. During the book writing, a vast majority of chefs around the world was inquired. They were asked to name the restaurants where they like to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which restaurants can they recommend for travelling and so on. Grounding on these answers his actual book was written, which now includes around 6500 different establishments.
Moreover, Joe is also working on another award, that is called “The World’s Restaurant Awards”. This grant is different from “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list since it encompasses lots of criteria, complying with which restaurants can get it. Jury is going to inspect nominated restaurants and then choose a winner due to each criteria. The first jury meetup that consists of more than 100 people is going to be held this May, and they will discuss the rules of the inspections. While the first ceremony award will be in 2019.
Joe loves London and its restaurants’ diversity so passionately that he started leading a weekly radio program where he tells about new restaurant that he has visited recently. Restaurants’ rebirth in London started in 1987 when more quality and conceptually creative establishments emerged. Earlier, many restaurants served French cuisine since it was generally considered that such conceptions receive more attention from Michelin. Even now there are lots of restaurants with French cuisine but from that time the gustatory world of London became something more significant and more new-format establishments have been opened since that time. Now, small casual business-lunch-friendly restaurants gain more popularity. Many Michelin cooks also start presenting more simple dishes. However, there is something unshakable – the products should be always of a high quality.
During the last 5 years London has experienced such tendency that more restaurants have closed than opened. Now it is vice versa: more new restaurants emerge and the amount of closures is reduced. Joe names new generation as one of the reasons for that. He states that millenials prefer to rent more than to buy a property. Consequently, they have more spare money for going out to the restaurants than the older generations have. Also, they are more knowledgeable of what they are eating.
Additionally, on the popularity peaks are the kitchen-incubators for cooks with their ideas for the restaurants. They have helped to enhance their ideas to such an extent that they are promptly ready to go straight to investors. That inspires a lot of restaurant business’ representatives due to minimal investments to competently elaborate on their brand, gain investors and open a restaurant in the future.
