Emerging economies move up world's best restaurant rankings A gastronomic boom in emerging economies has propelled restaurants from Peru, Brazil and Mexico up the rankings in a prestigious annual list of the best places to eat in the world. The highest riser in the latest S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants list, compiled by Restaurant magazine, is Astrid y Gaston from Lima, which jumped 21 paces to number 14. With another experimental eatery, Central, breaking into the top 50 for the first time, the Peruvian capital now has the same number of restaurants on the list as London. Similarly, the Mexico City venues Biko and Pujol both had strong showings with 31st and 17th places respectively, while D.O.M. in São Paulo kept its place in the top ten and Mani, from the same city, made it on to the list for the first time. Asia claimed three new entries, two for China - Mr & Mrs Bund in Shanghai and Otto E Mezzo Bombana in Hong Kong - and one for Singapore with Restaurant Andre, which offers "delicate southern French nouvelle cuisine." But it was a mixed year for some of the more established names. Copenhagen's Noma, which has been top for three years running, was toppled from its perch by the Spanish restaurant El Celler de Can Roca, self-styled purveyor of "emotional cuisine" run by the Roca brothers. English chef Heston Blumenthal - whose Dinner restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental hotel was one of London's entrants - saw the famous Fat Duck sink 20 places to 33rd spot. "Everything moves on, there is a new approach in cooking," said Mr Blumenthal. In Brazil, there's no Michelin guide, and São Paulo's not somewhere you think of as a restaurant force. For [these restaurants] to be able to get [this kind of] coverage is fantastic. However, he shrugged off the Fat Duck's relatively poor showing - "the Duck is the best it's ever been, it's polished and exciting" - adding: "It's very hard to have a "best" restaurant. When you start numbering them in the list, who's to say [one] is better or more favoured [than another]? While Europe continued to dominate the list, taking eight of the top ten slots, it also had some of the biggest fallers, such as Joël Robuchon's Parisian venue L'Atelier Saint-Germain, which dropped 12 places to number 24.