How Readers Chose Food & Wine's Global Tastemakers Winners

Global Tastemakers is our first-ever reader’s choice awards, celebrating the best culinary destinations in the U.S. and abroad. F&W readers voted based on travel completed within the past three years, on categories including restaurants and bars, cities, hotels, airports, airlines, and cruises. Due to the limitations of pandemic travel, this year’s Global Tastemakers winners reflect a smaller portion of the globe. In many categories, we’re including an editor’s pick to shout out some more culinary destinations in places you can’t miss. See all the winners at foodandwine.com/globaltastemakers.

This year, we unveiled our first-ever Global Tastemakers awards, which recognize the very best culinary hotels, restaurants, cruises, airlines, cities, and more categories around the world. Rather than choosing the winners ourselves, we asked Food & Wine readers to vote based on their own travels, recalling the most memorable food and beverage experiences they've had while in transit.

A survey developed by the editors of Food & Wine, in association with research firm M&RR, was made available at fwglobaltastemakers.com from October 11, 2021, through December 18, 2022. Readers were invited to participate through Food & Wine magazine, newsletters, social media, and foodandwine.com. M&RR maintained, monitored, and kept the survey website secure and collected and tabulated the responses. To protect the integrity of the data, after the survey closed, Food & Wine and M&RR screened the responses to identify fraudulent votes, which were eliminated from the final tallies.

Respondents were asked to rate airlines, airports, cities, cruise ships, hotels, restaurants, and bars on a number of characteristics (see more below). For each characteristic, respondents could choose a rating of among the best, excellent, above average, average, and below average. In most categories, respondents could also rate optional characteristics; these ratings are not included in the overall scores. 

Hotels were categorized as "City" or "Resort" based on location and amenities. 

For the cruise category, respondents were asked to rate individual ships; the results were combined to generate scores for cruise lines in different categories. The categories are mega-ship ocean cruise lines (capacity of 1,500 cabins or more), large-ship ocean cruise lines (800 to 1,499 cabins), midsize-ship ocean cruise lines (300 to 799 cabins), small-ship ocean cruise lines (150 to 299 cabins), intimate-ship ocean cruise lines (150 or fewer cabins) and river cruise lines. Some cruise lines may appear in multiple categories depending on the makeup of their fleet.

A team of 150 industry professionals, including freelance writers, editors, and photographers nominated the best restaurants and bars they've visited in the past three years in the following cities: Toronto, Paris, Rome, London, Barcelona, Lima, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Cape Town, Dubai, Istanbul, Bangkok, Sydney, Singapore; and domestic: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Nashville, Austin, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington DC, Atlanta, Boston, Charleston, and New Orleans. That initial list was used to populate the reader survey, which was then voted on.

A minimum number of responses was necessary for a candidate to be eligible for inclusion in the Global Tastemakers rankings. Some companies were eligible to be rated in multiple categories; they were scored independently for each category.

Categories and Characteristics

Airlines: Food offerings, Food quality, Beverage offerings, Service; Optional: Wine program/wine lists.

Airports: Variety of restaurants/bars, Quality of restaurants/bars, Grab-and-go food options, Optional: Lounges.

Bars: Drinks, Creativity, Service, Ambience, Design; Optional: Food, Wine list.

Cities: Fine dining restaurants, Neighborhood restaurants (full-service, non-chain), Food markets/halls, Food trucks, Street food, Bars, Culinary experiences/festivals; Optional: Culinary retail stores.

Cruise: Food, Drinks, Onboard culinary experiences, Culinary-focused shore excursions; Optional: Wine program/wine lists.

Hotels: On-site restaurants, Room service, Mini bar; Optional: On-site bars, Wine program/wine lists, Culinary experiences.

Restaurants: Food, Creativity, Service, Ambience, Design; Optional: Wine list, Cocktails/spirits list.