William Drew

The Path

William Drew entered the trade through editorial work at The World's 50 Best Restaurants, where the scale of the platform meant learning how rankings, language, and scrutiny all move together. That role sharpened a view of contemporary fine dining built on ambition, prestige, discovery, and the shifting standards used to measure excellence. He now serves as director of content of The World's 50 Best Restaurants and is the author of The World's 50 Best, extending that editorial framework into writing shaped by gastronomy, culture, and the people who carry both forward.

The Work Today

As director of content, Drew shapes how the organisation presents its rankings and how those rankings are read, balancing authority with clarity so the list reads as both fixed and part of a wider conversation. The work is not only about order; it is about the framing that determines how readers meet the restaurants most often discussed across the field. As author of The World's 50 Best, he continues from the same position, with years spent inside the industry’s changing standards informing the way he writes about it. Asked about the list, he said, "I think our DNA is in the ranking." The line points to how central structure and judgment are to his work, with the ranking functioning not as an accessory to the brand but as its defining form. That same discipline carries through the way he speaks about the field: measured, direct, and attentive to the pressures remaking dining from the ground up.

In Their Words “Sustainability will go from being a sideshow to being at the heart of gastronomic philosophy: less food waste, more plant-based options, better working conditions.” “I find it exciting how diverse and accessible gastronomy is becoming: Talented people from different cultures are telling their stories through the plate.”

Acclaim

His editorial stance reaches past ranking mechanics and into the larger questions of where gastronomy is heading. On sustainability, Drew treats it as a change in how kitchens define responsibility, not a passing theme. "Sustainability will go from being a sideshow to being at the heart of gastronomic philosophy: less food waste, more plant-based options, better working conditions." The focus is practical and forward-looking, tying dining’s future to ethics and labor as much as to taste. He has also written about the widening reach of gastronomy itself, describing a field in which more voices are able to speak through food on their own terms. "I find it exciting how diverse and accessible gastronomy is becoming: Talented people from different cultures are telling their stories through the plate." In Drew’s view, the restaurant world is not closing around a single canon; it is becoming more open, more varied, and more reflective of the people working within it.