5 top restaurants in sunny holiday destinations

Extraordinary, impressive, unforgettable flavours: we serve up some culinary highlights from around the globe.

Today’s menu features five sunny destinations in Bangkok, Dubai, Rio, Mexico, and Lima that delight guests with culinary works of art.

In the heart of Bangkok, Gaggan Anand stages not a classic dinner, but a culinary work of art in his eponymous restaurant. The rebellious chef, who describes himself as the ​‘conductor of chaos’, combines Indian roots, Japanese precision, and theatrical staging to create an experience that sits somewhere between cuisine, concert, and performance – for only 14 guests.

gaggan​.com

GAIA Dubai is like a short holiday in the Aegean – only without the jet lag. At the highly coveted Chef’s Table, you can watch the chefs at work as if you were part of the team yourself. The lounge focuses on deep seating and even deeper relaxation. The main dining room is the culinary heart of the establishment: a daily fresh fish market, a salad bar, and a wood-fired oven that conjures up flavours that go straight to the heart and soul – and, of course, the stomach.

gaia​-restaurants​.com

Nestled in the luxurious Santa Teresa Hotel RJ – MGallery, a former coffee plantation dating back to 1850, sitting high above Rio – the restaurant serves contemporary cuisine with a Latin American twist. The cooking here is fresh, creative, and uncomplicated. ​‘Tropical chic’ only half describes the setting: it’s more like a date with Rio itself, complete with an excquisite wine list that makes both romantic evenings and business lunches surprisingly more relaxed.

santateresahotelrio​.com

In Mexico, there are places where food is suddenly more than just a menu – it’s more like an expedition into the country’s culinary memory. One of these places is in Polanco, where chef-owner Enrique Olvera has been running one of the country’s most famous dining rooms for several years: Pujol. Together with his team, he has been setting out to reinterpret Mexico, every season for 25 years. The result is a continuation of Mexican cuisine. The wine list? Full of regional winemakers, some of them exclusive to the restaurant.

pujol​.com​.mx

Chef Mitsuharu ​‘Micha’ Tsumura, the father of Peruvian-Japanese Nikkei cuisine, thinks of food as a living universe: constantly changing, shaped by encounters, migration, and exchange. Tsumura takes the essence of Japan, crosses it with the depth of Peru, and creates dishes that taste as though someone has brought two culinary family trees together. 

maido​.pe

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