This time of year is all about The World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards, so naturally all foodies are breathlessly anticipating the crowning of Rene Redzepi's Noma for the 4th year running - or not, given his bad luck with that food poisoning outbreak a little while back. If he gets it, he will have equalled El Bulli's record; if he doesn't, then frankly your guess is as good as ours and did you put any money on it?
Alain Ducasse will be given the Lifetime Achievement Award during the ceremony in acknowledgement of his 30 years dedicated service to the industry - perhaps a small nudge towards retirement to save us all from the increasingly outrageous sums of money demanded for his now spectacularly overblown food ...
Nadia Santini has been awarded the heavily misogynistic World's Best Female Chef 2013 title. Based in Lombardy, she is renowned for the delicacy and clever simplicity of her Italian food and the award is well deserved, but is it not something of an anachronism that we are still categorising chefs according to gender, rather than ability; it appears unthinkable that a female chef could simply be World's Best Chef. Even Anthony Bourdain finds it "curious" - a sign that the rest of us might find it outrageous and bizarre in 2013.
Raymond Blanc, never backward in coming forward, bless him, has called for chefs to sign up for the first international eco-rating, the Global Sustainability Rating, launched by the Sustainable Restaurant Association. It aims to rate restaurants according to their sourcing and energy conservation and efficiency in a bid to encourage diners to think about minimising the environmental impact of eating out whilst the restaurant's industrial ovens, dishwashers and washing machines run day and night to ensure they can do so.
In other environmental news, Brighton will soon welcome its first cycling cafe. Velo will open in 10 locations across the country in the next 5 years, encouraging cyclists to drop in for coffee and snacks en route, then bring the family down at the weekend. We think this is a cracking idea, even though it might have the adverse effect of forcing cyclists to pedal longer just to work off the extra Danish now added to their day.
Oh... and in case you're wondering, the winner of The World's 50 Best Restaurants was El Celler de Can Roca from Girona in Spain. Now that three of the top 10 are based in Spain, we can only surmise this means we've come a long way baby from pitchers of lukewarm Sangria and fish and chips - or not...
