Gaggan Tops Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for a Fourth Year

Gaggan, the Bangkok restaurant of the Kolkata-born chef Gaggan Anand, was named No.1 in Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants on 27 March 2018. It was the fourth consecutive year at the top of the list, a run that no other restaurant has matched. The ceremony was held in the ballroom of Wynn Palace in Macau, the first time the awards had taken place in the city.

The top ten

Two Tokyo restaurants followed. Den, Zaiyu Hasegawa’s playful take on kaiseki, rose to second place, and Florilège, Hiroyasu Kawate’s French restaurant with its open kitchen, to third. Sühring, the German restaurant in Bangkok, was fourth and Odette of Singapore fifth.

The second half of the top ten was Narisawa in Tokyo, Amber in Hong Kong, Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet in Shanghai, Nihonryori RyuGin in Tokyo and Nahm in Bangkok. Bangkok and Tokyo therefore held seven of the first ten places between them, a balance that has marked the list ever since.

The awards

Bee Satongun of Paste in Bangkok was named Asia’s Best Female Chef. André Chiang, who had closed Restaurant André in Singapore a few weeks earlier, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 41. La Cime in Osaka was the highest new entry, at No.17, and Toyo Eatery in Manila received the One To Watch award. Eight restaurants entered the list for the first time.

Gaggan’s announcement

Gaggan Anand had already said that he would close the restaurant in 2020, at the height of its success, and open a small restaurant in Fukuoka with Takeshi Fukuyama of La Maison de la Nature Goh. On stage he spoke of the chefs of the list as a family and said it was time for the older ones to leave and the younger to take over.

At the time the restaurant served a menu of 25 courses presented to guests as a list of emoji, most of them eaten with the hands, in a white house off Lang Suan Road. It had received two stars in the first Michelin Guide Bangkok three months earlier.

What happened next

The plan changed. In 2019 Gaggan lost first place to Odette, and later that year Anand left the original restaurant after a dispute with his partners and opened a new one with most of his team. Den reached the top in 2022. And in 2025, the new Gaggan returned to No.1, seven years after this fourth title.