When chefs gathered at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London for the launch of the Opinionated About Dining top 100+ European list, they were given a list of the top 100+ restaurants. As one would expect on such occasions, they took to social media to announce their positions and take photos of the list which they posted on their social media profiles.
Little did they know that the list they had been given at the dinner was not the correct one. A quick look at the online list showed discrepancies from the 32nd place till the 62nd place. While this may have led to some moments of joy and then deception or vice versa for those concerned, luckily the error did not concern the first places of the list which would have caused the organisers of the event even greater embarrassment.
The assumption, given the fact that the list was printed and distributed at “The Great Roast” dinner was that the correct list was the one that was distributed in the hall that evening.
Alas this was not the case. The organisers were not aware of the mistake until late at night. “We realised the error in the booklet that was given out after the dinner and Steve sent an email to all OAD reviewers notifying them of the error last night. All press that booked tickets through us were notified in the morning and the chefs who attended the dinner were also notified,” the organisers said.
“As you can imagine, this was not an ideal situation for anyone concerned. The final copy of the brochure had been proof-read and signed off by many parties and was sent to the designers in its correct form. The version that was went to the printers was not the approved version. We apologise for any confusion,” OAD said.
The OAD list claims to be the only restaurant ranking system that determines the experience level of the people contributing reviews to the site. Each reviewer is assigned a weight that reflects the number of restaurants he/she has visited and those restaurants’ rank on the OAD list. “While this system affords anyone who would like to participate the opportunity to do so, the final rankings reflect the opinions of reviewers who have demonstrated a higher level of expertise than you will find in other survey based ranking systems,” the OAD claim. The list is the brainchild of Steve Plotnicki.
Andreas Caminada managed to top the list for the first time, surpassing last year’s no 1 Alain Passard of L’Arpege in Paris who placed fourth on the list.
The second placed was Magnus Nilsson of restaurant Faviken while third place was Etxebarri. Eneko Atxa of Azurmendi placed fifth.
Mistakes happen. Alas, we would not want to be in the shoes of the designer who sent the list to the printers.
The correct list can be found here.
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