Meet The Classics: The Best 2017 Luxury Restaurants Worldwide

SEPIA – SYDNEY – It’s the little things that count here. Take the salmon ball presented as an amuse-bouche: bite into it and a filling of smoked salmon roe provokes tantalising shock-waves of intense flavour. This is what chef Martin Benn does best: create seemingly simple dishes that astonish with their complexity, combining French techniques with Japanese ingredients such as dashi jelly, wakami oil and sobacha. Spanner-crab meat is teamed with sake-vinegar jelly, pea and horseradish and folded as carefully as origami; a simple curl of squid, decorated with miso-cured egg yolk and a wasabi flower, calls to mind the curves of a Miro painting.

And Benn’s nine-course menus end as strongly as they begin, with puddings such as The Pearl, a pristine sphere of white chocolate and finger lime.

KEENS STEAKHOUSE, NEW YORK – Keens serves fantastic steak but became famous for its even more fantastic mutton. It opened in 1885 and in 1935 served its millionth mutton chop. Somebody played a fanfare on a bugle that had supposedly been used in the War of the Roses. The manager gave a speech and waived the bill. The great shepherd in the sky alone knows how many mutton chops Keens has sold since then. A flock of a lot. Even without the fanfare and the speech, and even if you have to pay the bill, a Keens mutton chop remains one of the glories of Midtown Manhattan. Look out for the 50,000 long-stemmed clay pipes that hang, with a peculiar elegance, from the ceiling – not that you’re likely to miss them. Lillie Langtry, JP Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt and Babe Ruth ate here. You should too.

THE WHITE ROOM, AMSTERDAM – Arctic-white walls exuberantly encrusted with gold give this venerable 19th-century building its name. There the history stops. A recent revamp has introduced funky spherical chandeliers, a classy-yet-cool tone and an invigoratingly fresh take on the food. Chef Jacob Jan Boerma is guided by three culinary fundaments – ‘citrus, spice and vegetables’ – and his dishes are delicate, full of secrets and liable to mini explosions of surprising flavours. A slice of lime gives prawn tartare a zing as it slips onto your tongue; an intense zap of lemon lurks beneath a perfectly cooked piece of trout, with green-mustard sabayon. Wasabi, curry, Indonesian spices all play cameo roles. Each plate is feat of beauty, with bold colours, odd shapes and energetic composition.

INDIAN ACCENT, NEW DELHI – India’s restaurant critics are notoriously picky, which makes the non-stop gushing that has flowed since chef Manish Mehrotra’s opened here in2009 so significant. His genius lies in splicing global ingredients into regional recipes from India’s 29 states. So the stuffing he uses in the traditional kulcha – one of the country’s 400-plus breads – is chilli hoisin duck, or applewood-smoked bacon, or wild mushrooms and truffle oil. Kofta, the delicately spiced Indian dumpling, is made herewith tofu instead of paneer and served with a wok-tossed quinoa pulao. The result is not so much fusion as synergy: inventive twists that serve to accentuate the complex flavours of Indian food, and reason enough to plan a trip to the Indian capital.

EL MERCADO, LIMA – Lima’s culinary boom may have produced fancier restaurants but none, surely, is better loved than El Mercado, the casual lunch-only affair opened in 2010 by superstar local chef Rafael Osterling. Tucked away down a Miraflores side street, the permanently packed, semi-open-air space has the informal clatter and hum of an actual market with bartenders serving superb Pisco Sours to the endlessly replenished queue. As well as a full range of top-grade ceviches, the menu also includes excellent tiraditos such as the Nikkei (yellowfin tuna sliced thin, marinated in lime and served with sesame oil and avocado aioli). Other highlights include a superlative shrimp burger and the causa original, Osterling’s upmarket take on the Peruvian staple of mashed potato terrine layered with seafood.

ZASS, POSITANO – Belgian chef Alois Vanlangenaeker won Zass a Michelin star in 2002 for dishes such as spaghetti Positano (made with a variety of local tomatoes) and John Dory in a lemon crust with a buffalo yoghurt and potato puree. Armed with a fabulous array of seasonal produce grown on the slopes of Il San Pietro hotel’s sun-drenched gardens, he now has a new €3-million kitchen designed by Andrea Viacava in which to work. Dinner is served on the most romantic of terraces overlooking the coast, or at the olive-wood chef’s table.

Dishes, served by white-jacketed waiters, are hugely accomplished and the atmosphere is elegant, but this is far from being pompous; slabs of sizzling pizza are served as an amuse bouche on colourful ceramic plates from nearby Vietri, a marvellously grounding touch.

TOQUE! MONTREAL – Norman Laprise, an early adopter of farm-to-fork food, shook up Montreal’s French restaurant scene when he opened here 23 years ago. And it’s still ahead of the game. Line-caught tuna is served with aubergine puree, matsutake mushrooms, herring roe and dulse sauce and the winter foie-gras poele comes with ground pine, crushed popcorn and ash oil. Everything is faultlessly executed and yet feels utterly spontaneous. The interior is as dramatic as it is sober, with a floating wine rack showcasing some of the restaurant’s excellent vintages as the main decorative feature. The polished staff, in true Montreal style, switch effortlessly between French and English, orchestrating proceedings like well-rehearsed actors in a long-running Broadway show.

WILTON’S, LONDON – Fashions come and go but Wilton’s has stuck to what it does best for more than 250 years: serving traditional food, perfectly cooked and simply presented. The salmon is fresh from a Scottish river; shellfish delivered live are cooked upon arrival; grouse, still feathered, are rushed from the moor on the night train to London. Chef Daniel Kent sources the very best ingredients to be found in the British Isles: even the cured trout comes from a chalk stream. Ending the feast are Edwardian puddings such as syllabub and trifles soaked in sherry, or a Welsh rarebit of mustardy cheese on toast triangles. It’s more of a dining room than a restaurant, where amorous liaisons are played out in the depths of the green velvet booths, and deals brokered by captains of industry and politicians. Discretion is as much a part of Wilton’s as its service.

LA PASSAGERE, CAP D’ANTIBES – The view from the terrace here is the same enjoyed by F Scott Fitzgerald when he rented this Art Deco villa, now the family-run hotel Belles Rives. A nostalgic Riviera vibe prevails, from the Thirties-style dining room to the Picasso-inspired ceramic plates. The delicate Mediterranean flavours created by Yoric Tieche are pure joy: salt-crusted sea bream with artichokes, and sauteed monkfish with passionfruit-ginger glaze, followed by whimsical puddings of rum-infused pineapple flam be with black-sesame ice cream, and limoncello souffle. It’s easy to see why it was recently given its first Michelin star. After-dinner drinks are virtually compulsory in the Fitzgerald bar, where you can imagine Scott puffing away on Chesterfields while scribbling notes for Tender is the Night.