50 Best Restaurants Awards Announced; Eleven Madison Park Is No. Noma, a tiny rough-hewn restaurant in Copenhagen, has spent three years at the top of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, generated annually by the British trade publication Restaurant Magazine. But at the 2013 ceremony in London Monday night, with hundreds of chefs gathered from all corners of the culinary world, the family restaurant El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, nudged into the No. 1 spot, after trailing Noma for three years at No. "We don't know if we are the best restaurant, but you can be sure we will keep working with authenticity, with hospitality, and with creativity," said Joan Roca, the eldest of the three brothers who run the restaurant. The new rankings return the top spot to Spain, where Ferran Adria's El Bulli reigned at No. And it brought other significant changes: Per Se in New York City and Alinea in Chicago were both dropped out of the top ten, leaving only one U.S. restaurant on the short list - Eleven Madison Park in New York City, up from No. 10 to No. The awards have become one of the most sought-after honors for restaurateurs. The prizes are determined from the opinions of more than 900 unpaid judges - among them chefs, restaurant investors, journalists, and food enthusiasts - who are to have eaten in any restaurant they vote for within the last 18 months. Detractors point out that the judges do not prove they have eaten in the restaurants for which they vote, and are free to make their decisions based on word-of-mouth, or vote for their friends and colleagues. Judges may also accept assistance in making up their minds, such as free meals from restaurants and free trips from government tourism boards eager to raise their country's culinary profile. The lists are sponsored by brands like Lavazza, Veuve Clicquot, and Gaggenau, and at the ceremony, the trophies were handed out by executives of San Pellegrino. While other food arbiters, like the Michelin guides, have reduced coverage, the World's 50 Best has expanded: this year, region-specific 50 Best lists for Asia and Latin America were published for the first time. New to the top 10 is Vendome, near Cologne in Germany. Like many chefs in northern Europe, Joachim Wissler has swiftly moved his restaurant away from French haute cuisine and toward local tradition, becoming an avatar of the fashionable "neue Deutsche küche," or modern German cuisine. With Le Bernardin at 19 and Daniel at 29, the United States has six restaurants in the top 50, but they placed lower than in past years. In 2003 and 2004, the first two years the list was published, The French Laundry in the Napa Valley, where Thomas Keller is the chef, was No. 1; this year, it ranks No.