Gaggan in Bangkok is The Best Restaurant in Asia for 2026. Per the list revealed at the Asia's 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony on March 25, 2026, at the Kerry Hotel in Hong Kong, the Indian-progression dining room of chef Gaggan Anand took the top spot, with Hong Kong's Cantonese institution The Chairman at No. 2 — its city's best-ranked table. The 51–100 portion of the list had been announced earlier, on March 12.
What does the 2026 list say about where to eat in Asia?
The top ten leaned firmly toward Chinese kitchens: per the South China Morning Post's coverage, restaurants from Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau placed strongly in the upper tier, with The Chairman joined by Wing at No. 2 in the city's count. Singapore placed six restaurants inside the top 50. Thailand's crown remained Gaggan's, and Japan's presence ran deep but without the top slot — Narisawa in Tokyo appeared at No. 37. Indonesia's Locavore NXT in Ubud ranked No. 44, and India's Naar in Kasauli reached No. 30, evidence of the list's widening geography beyond the traditional Tokyo–Bangkok–Singapore axis.
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Who took the individual awards?
Cho Eun-hee, the Seoul chef behind Onjium, was named Asia's Best Female Chef for 2026, and Ardika Dwitama took the Asia's Best Pastry Chef Award, sponsored by Valrhona, per the organization's awards announcements.
What does this mean for a trip?
Practically: expect the list's top rooms to tighten their booking windows immediately. Gaggan operates a seated tasting-menu format with limited nightly covers, and The Chairman's Cantonese tables are famously scarce — both should be booked the moment a Hong Kong or Bangkok trip is fixed. The list also functions as a route map: a single itinerary can now credibly string together Hong Kong (two top-ten rooms), Bangkok, Singapore's half-dozen entries, and a detour to Ubud or Kasauli for the new-guard entries.
How is the list made?
Asia's 50 Best is compiled from the votes of an academy of chefs, restaurateurs, food writers, and traveling gourmets in the region, sponsored by S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna; it is a snapshot of academy opinion, not an audit. For trip planning it is best read alongside Michelin's city selections — where the two overlap, demand, and therefore booking difficulty, compounds.