On 4 November 2026, Lima will host The World’s 50 Best Restaurants for the first time — the first staging of the ceremony in South America, and the consecration of a country that has placed two establishments at the top of the ranking in three years.
Two crowns in three years
Central was named best restaurant in the world in 2023; Maido succeeded it at the top of the ranking in 2025. Within three years, Peru has become the only Latin American country to have taken two different establishments to first place in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants — a concentration of recognition that no other country in the region has matched over so short a period.
Hosting rather than competing
4 November marks a change of status more than one more prize: Peru no longer merely sends candidates to a ceremony organised elsewhere, it becomes its host. The programme planned in Lima for the week — 50Best Talks, 50 Best Signature Sessions, dinners bringing together international chefs, Chefs’ Feast, the awards ceremony — physically shifts the centre of gravity of a ranking born, and long administered, from Europe.
A terroir claimed as a method
The press release attributes this success to the richness of the Peruvian terroir: from Lima’s colourful markets to the traditional picanterías, from the Pacific coast to the Amazon, each region has a distinct culinary identity, nourished by one of the richest biodiversities in the world. This geographical diversity, rather than a picturesque extra, appears to be the real raw material on which the international recognition of Peruvian cuisine was built.
Gastronomy as tourism policy
According to PROMPERÚ, the national tourism promotion agency, gastronomy is among the main motivations of the international travellers who choose Peru, particularly among Millennials and Generation X. Hosting The World’s 50 Best Restaurants is therefore not only a matter of culinary pride: it is an openly acknowledged instrument of tourism policy, in which the ranking becomes a lever of attractiveness on a par with an archaeological site or a nature reserve.
What Lima does not yet say
It remains to be seen whether this first South American staging of the ceremony will durably alter the geography of the ranking itself, or whether it will remain an isolated episode celebrating a country already honoured twice. 4 November will settle less the question of the best table in the world than that of who, from now on, holds the power to name it.
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