The French restaurant guide La Liste published this week its annual ranking of the 1,000 best restaurants in the world for 2026.
Despite the war that plunged the industry into an unprecedented crisis, eight Israeli culinary institutions made the exclusive list, earning further international recognition for Israeli cuisine.
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Ranking of Israeli restaurants
Tel Aviv, once again, maintains its status as Israel’s culinary capital with seven restaurants in the ranking. Jerusalem secured one spot. Leading the Israeli entries is OCD TLV, the tasting-menu restaurant run by chef Raz Rahav, which received a score of 88.5. Its menu is influenced by seasonal ingredients.
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Chef Raz Rahav
(Photo: Ryan Frois)
Next is Mashya, which earned 83 points. The restaurant is located on the entrance level of Mendeli Street Hotel. Its kitchen emphasizes local ingredients, freshness and the use of spices, combined with modern cooking techniques.
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Mashya
(Photo: Asaf Karela)
ALENA is next with a score of 81.5. It serves as the main restaurant of the Norman Hotel in Tel Aviv and is led by chefs Daniel Zur and Omer Shadmi.
Following them is Manta Ray, the veteran fish and seafood restaurant on Alma Beach, which earned 77.5 points.
Claro, run by chef Ran Shmueli, received 77 points. Located in the Sarona complex inside a restored Templar building, it follows a farm-to-table approach with a menu based on local seasonal produce.
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Shakshuka at Claro
(Photo: Eitan Vaxman)
Alongside it, with the same score, is Pastel, also at 77 points. The restaurant, located at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, is led by chef Gal Ben Moshe, who previously owned a Michelin-star restaurant in Berlin.
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A dish at Pastel
(Photo: Asaf Karela)
Jerusalem also makes the list with Chakra, which received 76 points. The restaurant, operating for 25 years, offers a menu combining fish, seafood and meat. It recently won the title of “Best Restaurant in Israel for 2025” at the World Culinary Awards held on the island of Sardinia in Italy.
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Team of Chakra
(Photo: Asaf Karela)
Rounding out the Israeli group is Popina, also with 76 points. This chef restaurant, led by Orel Kimchi and located in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood, structures its menu not by starters and mains but by five cooking techniques: curing, steaming, baking, grilling and slow cooking.
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Orel Kimchi, Popoina
(Photo: Haim Yosef)
At the top of the 2026 global ranking there is no single winner. Ten elite restaurants share first place, each receiving the rare weighted score of 99.5. The list spans a wide geographic range and a variety of styles, from traditional Japanese cuisine to molecular gastronomy in Spain.
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Leading the list is Guy Savoy in Paris, France, located inside the historic national building Monnaie (Mint) and focused on preserving the original flavors of its ingredients.
From the United States, the top tier includes New York’s Le Bernardin, known for seafood, and SingleThread in California, whose kitchen is based on produce from its own farm.
In the European arena, the standouts are Cheval Blanc in Basel, Switzerland, offering refined French cuisine; Da Vittorio in Italy, near Bergamo, serving Lombard tradition at a country estate; Martín Berasategui in Spain’s Basque region, known for creative modern cooking; and Schwarzwaldstube in Germany, located deep in the Black Forest.
Completing the group are the Asian representatives: Matsukawa in Tokyo, Japan, which operates in the traditional kaiseki style; Lung King Heen in Hong Kong, specializing in Cantonese cuisine at the Four Seasons hotel; and Robuchon au Dôme in Macau, set within a glass dome and serving French gastronomic cuisine.
La Liste is considered one of the most comprehensive and objective metrics in the culinary world. It was founded in 2015 at the direct initiative of the French Foreign Ministry as a counterweight to other rankings seen as shortchanging French cuisine.
Earning a place on the list is considered a particularly reliable mark of quality, precisely because it does not rely on the taste of any single critic but on a broad global consensus.
Unlike traditional food guides that dispatch human reviewers, La Liste’s methodology is built entirely on big data. The system continuously scans more than 1,100 information sources in 200 countries: from elite guides like Michelin and Gault & Millau, to reviews in major newspapers such as the New York Times, to ratings by users on leading travel sites.
The algorithm standardizes all scores to a uniform 0–100 scale, giving greater weight to more reliable sources (a Michelin score counts for more than an anonymous blog). The result is a weighted rating that reduces bias and provides an objective snapshot of a restaurant’s quality.
Dining and Cooking