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Vietnam, Thailand and India all made the cut – with Ho Chi Minh City’s CieL Dining leading Asia’s charge at No.3

Asia’s dining scene is having a serious moment. Leading the charge is CieL Dining in Ho Chi Minh City, which has landed at No.3 on Food & Wine’s 2026 list of the world’s top 10 global restaurants, making it the highest-ranked Asian entry on the list. It leads a strong showing for the region, with three restaurants from Asia making the cut in total: Potong in Bangkok comes in at No.5, while Naar in Darwa, India, takes No.6. Taken together, the list is another reminder of just how robust and diverse Asia’s dining scene is right now. Come on, we've got everything from polished Vietnamese fine dining to modern Sino-Thai tasting menus and a Himalayan restaurant rooted in mountain landscapes.
The ranking is part of Food & Wine’s Global Tastemakers awards and was compiled with input from more than 400 chefs, travel experts, food and travel writers, and wine professionals. These are restaurants chosen not just for their polished technique but for their distinct point of view. These are the kind of places that make a strong case for building an entire trip around dinner.
Asia’s top-ranked entry, CieL Dining, is the intimate, dinner-only restaurant opened by chef Việt Hồng in Thao Dien in early 2024. Food & Wine praises the way Hồng brings together French training and Vietnamese flavours, with dishes such as kailaan with foie gras, cóc fruit with house-made muối tôm, a deconstructed drunken chicken, and a signature fish maw custard. It has already earned its first Michelin star, which is not exactly a bad start.
Then there is Potong in Bangkok, chef Pam Soontornyanakij’s celebrated take on modern Sino-Thai cuisine in Yaowaraj. Set inside her family’s former Chinese herbal medicine building, the restaurant serves a 20-course tasting menu that reworks ingredients like dried scallop, salted egg and pandan into something far more intricate and dramatic than your average dinner out.
Rounding things out is Naar in Darwa, where chef Prateek Sadhu has created a 16-seat Himalayan restaurant centred on the landscapes and seasons of northern India. Expect ingredients like yak cheese, river trout, buckwheat and mountain mushrooms, all used to tell a deeper story about place.
So yes, London took the top spot overall. But with three of the world’s top 10 now in Vietnam, Thailand and India, Asia’s case as one of the most exciting places to eat right now is looking pretty airtight.
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