Busan aims to host the Asia edition of the U.K.-based ‘World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ and land its city’s restaurants on the list — an experts’ familiarization tour tests the city as a food destination.
After making its debut on the world stage with the Michelin Guide, Busan is now aiming at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. The goal, the city says, is to use an internationally authoritative evaluation system to introduce Busan — a food city with distinctive regional cuisine and culture — to the wider world.
According to the city on Apr. 7, Busan plans to hold various gastronomy events through the year, with the goal of hosting Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants (A50B). Run by the U.K. media company William Reed as the Asia edition of its World’s 50 Best Restaurants (W50B) guide, A50B was held in Seoul last year and this year.
W50B is regarded as an authority on par with France’s Michelin Guide. Its list is chosen by 1,080 panelists across 27 regions worldwide — 40 per region — each casting 10 votes. Panels consist of chefs and restaurant operators, food writers and critics, and well-traveled gourmets; at least 25 percent of each regional panel rotates every year.
To that end, the city last month appointed Choi Jung-yoon, chair of the W50B Korea-Taiwan region, as its policy advisor on gastronomy tourism. From March 26 to 28 it invited about 10 gastronomy experts from five countries — Hong Kong, Japan, China and others — for a fam tour of Busan. Participants included Choi, along with the W50B chairs for Japan and Hong Kong-Macau (who had come to Seoul for A50B) and chef Danny Yip of Hong Kong’s The Chairman, ranked No. 1 on A50B in 2021.
The tour began at the auction floor of Busan’s Cooperative Fish Market and worked through the city’s food culture — traditional local dishes such as dwaeji gukbap (pork-and-rice soup), yang gopchang (grilled beef offal), straw-fire hagfish and raw fish, followed by original tasting menus at a Michelin one-star restaurant built around local specialties such as Daejeo salt-tinged tomatoes, Gijang anchovies and kelp. On day two, Mayor Park Heong-joon met tour participants along with chefs and restaurant-industry figures from Seoul and Busan to discuss ways to cooperate.
The city intends the tour as the start of a broader push to introduce Busan’s gastronomy content to globally influential food circles and to land Busan restaurants on the “Best Restaurants” list before it can host A50B itself. On the most recent A50B and W50B lists, Korea placed four and one restaurants respectively — all in Seoul.
Also in the works are community support and forums centered on the city’s most valuable gastronomy asset: its chefs. Later this month the mayor plans to gather the chefs of Busan’s 48 Michelin-listed restaurants and present them with plaques. In the second half of the year, the city is planning an international gastronomy forum with world-class chefs.
Choi Jung-yoon, the city’s policy advisor, said: “For Busan to grow into a gastronomy-tourism city, we have to make world-class chefs, food experts and media pay attention to Busan. Hosting A50B is a chance for Busan to become a new hub of Asian gastronomy — and a platform to establish and develop the city’s culinary identity.”
· Original (Korean): busan.com
