NO FRENCH EATERY WAS LISTED IN THE WORLD'S TOP TEN

For a country that regards itself as the gold standard of gastronomy, it was hard to swallow. That no French establishment made it into the list of the world's top 10 best restaurants this year initially left food critics in Paris lost for words.

Two days after the San Pellegrino list of the planet's best eateries was unveiled in London, the Gallic heavyweights fought back on Wednesday, questioning the methodology and dismissing the entire classification as idiotic.

In an editorial for Le Figaro, the esteemed food critic Francois Simon said the very idea of choosing the world's best restaurants had been rendered absurd by the variety of contemporary cooking.

''Can one declare an excellent creperie to be better than a delicious couscous restaurant (or a sushi place, a [Vietnamese] pho cafe, a trattoria …)? How silly,'' he wrote, adding in a swipe at the list's British origins: ''And yet our friends, who rarely cross their own borders, have just published this idiotic classification.''

The annual ranking, which is published in conjunction with the trade magazine Restaurant, seeks to keep track of world trends by asking more than 800 jury members to vote for their favourite eatery of the year. The top 10 featured four Spanish restaurants, three American, one Italian, one British and one Danish - Noma, the winner, in Copenhagen.

A spokesman for Restaurant said the rankings were less a ''definitive'' line-up than a ''snapshot in time … reflecting changing patterns'' in global cuisine.