Masque and Naar Make the World's 50 Best Restaurants 2026: 6 Lessons for Every Restaurant Owner

What happened on 4 November

The World's 50 Best Restaurants is a yearly ranking put together from the votes of more than a thousand chefs, food writers and well-travelled diners. It isn't a guide like Michelin. It's a list, and it moves a lot of bookings. The 2026 edition was announced in Lima, and India had a good night.

• Masque, Mumbai: No. 26. Opened in 2016 by Aditi Dugar in an old mill compound in Mahalaxmi, with chef Varun Totlani now running the kitchen. It was No. 68 on last year's extended 51–100 list, a jump of 42 places.
• Naar, Kasauli: No. 49. Chef Prateek Sadhu's 16-seat restaurant in the hills of Himachal. Its name means "fire" in Kashmiri. It is Naar's first time in the global top 50.
• Naar also won the Sustainable Restaurant Award 2026. The organisers pointed to its work with small local producers, its links with the community around it, and its low-impact cooking.

One more name Indian readers will spot: Gaggan in Bangkok, at No. 2. It's run by Kolkata-born chef Gaggan Anand, so it's not an India-based restaurant, but it shows how far Indian flavours travel.

The top 10 for 2026

The full 1–50 list, with every special award, is on the official site: the50.com.

It wasn't overnight

It's easy to read a headline like this and think it came from one lucky year. It didn't. Both restaurants climbed one list at a time.

Masque has been open for ten years. Naar has worked its way up the Asia list first. Neither of them got there with one viral dish. They got there by doing the same things a bit better every service, and that is the part any owner can copy.

6 lessons you can use in your own restaurant

1. Buy close to home, and say so on the menu

Naar gets its ingredients from small local producers, and what they can't supply is grown on site or foraged nearby. Masque buys from all over India and is known for putting Indian produce front and centre.

You don't need a forest. Pick two or three things you buy every week (paneer, greens, eggs, coffee beans, ghee) and find a farm or small dairy within a few hours of you. Then put their name on the menu: "Palak from the Sharma farm, Sonipat". Guests notice, the quality is often better, and when the middleman is gone the price can be better too. Just check the numbers with a recipe cost calculator before you switch.

2. Let the menu follow the seasons

Masque's menu changes with the season, and Naar's follows the seasons of the mountains around it. Seasonal produce costs less when it's at its peak, it tastes better, and it gives regulars a reason to come back.

Keep your core menu the same, and add a small "this season" section of three or four dishes: mango in May, sarson in January, corn and bhutta in the monsoon. After a month, look at your sales report. Keep the dish that sold, drop the one that didn't, and try something new. Our menu engineering guide explains how to read those numbers.

3. Small can win

Naar has 16 seats, and it isn't in a metro. It's in the hills near Kasauli. People drive there because of what it is, not because they were passing by.

If you're tempted to open bigger, think about it the other way round. A smaller room with a tight menu means less stock sitting in the fridge, a smaller team you can train properly, and a place people talk about. Before signing a lease, run the numbers in the food business profit calculator. A full 30-seat room is usually a better business than a half-empty 80-seat one.

4. Measure your waste and your fuel

Part of why Naar won the sustainability award is how it cooks: most of the cooking is done over wood fire rather than gas, and it is built around low-impact cooking. You may not want to give up gas, especially after this year's LPG shortage, but you can start measuring.

For two weeks, write down what you throw away at closing: the item, the amount, and why. Most kitchens find the same two or three culprits, such as an over-prepped gravy, a slow dish, or bread ordered in bulk. Cut those, and track your stock in the POS so it tells you what is running low before you over-order again. There's more on this in how to cut food waste.

5. Remember your guests

Earlier this year Masque won the Art of Hospitality Award at Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. That award is about how guests are treated, not what's on the plate.

Hospitality is mostly memory. Mr. Iyer likes the corner table. Priya is allergic to peanuts. The family from Andheri always orders the dal first. When your team can see a guest's last order and notes the moment they sit down, a regular feels like a regular. You can do this with a notebook, but a POS that saves the customer's phone number, past orders and notes does it for every shift, including the days your best captain is off. A simple loyalty programme helps you say thank you to the people who keep coming back.

6. Get a little better every year

Masque went from No. 68 to No. 26 in one year, after nine years of steady work before that. The lesson isn't "win an award". The lesson is to pick one thing to improve each quarter and keep it up: faster tickets, fewer complaints, better reviews, lower food cost. Write the number down at the start, and check it again three months later.