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Bangkok does ceremony well. It also does food somewhat better than most cities on the planet. On Sunday night, the two came together predictably at the Hyatt Regency Sukhumvit, where Thailand’s most influential chefs and restaurateurs gathered for the TOP25 Restaurants Thailand Awards 2025. This event now carries genuine weight in a country where dining is both cultural currency and a serious economic force.

For the first time, the organisers folded Bangkok and Southern Thailand into a single national list, reflecting the way Thailand’s culinary gravity has quietly shifted south over the past decade. Phuket, Krabi and Samui are no longer peripheral holiday outposts with good seafood. They are now fully-fledged gastronomic players.

More than 200 industry figures filled the ballroom, chefs in tailored jackets, hotel executives in sober suits, and the inevitable clutch of sponsors surveying the room like careful shareholders. Nearly 100 restaurants were recognised across multiple categories, from classical fine dining to sustainability and service.

At the centre of it all was TOP25 founder Bernard Metzger, who struck a reflective note amid the applause.

“Tonight, we celebrate not only the achievements of individual restaurants but the extraordinary evolution of Thailand as a global culinary destination,” he said.
“By uniting Bangkok and Southern Thailand in one event, we highlight the remarkable talent across the country and reinforce Thailand’s position on the international dining map.”

It was not an empty theatre. The lists that followed suggested a dining nation resting on neither reputation nor nostalgia.

Bangkok’s Crown Stays With Sorn

At the top of the Bangkok TOP25 sat a familiar name. Sorn retained its status as the capital’s most coveted table, its fiercely regional southern Thai cooking still setting the benchmark for contemporary Thai fine dining.

Behind it came an eclectic parade of global technique and local storytelling:

Baan Tepa at number two
INDDEE at three
Côte by Mauro Colagreco at four
Sühring at five
Chef’s Table at six
POTONG at seven
Anne-Sophie Pic at Le Normandie at eight
Chai Jia Chai at nine
Mezzaluna is rounding out the top ten

The list read like a culinary atlas: French precision, German rigour, Thai heritage, and experimental modernism colliding in a city that has learned to absorb global techniques without surrendering its identity.

The South’s Ascent Accelerates

If Bangkok still commands the spotlight, it is the South that now supplies the drama. Topping the Phuket & Southern Thailand rankings was L’Arôme by the Sea, a restaurant whose clifftop theatrics are matched by technical restraint.

It was followed by:

The Smokaccia Laboratory
Aulis
hom
Tambu
Lae Lay, Krabi
JAMPA
Jaras
Royd
PRU

What unites this list is not luxury for its own sake but an evolving confidence in local sourcing, fermentation, heritage produce and regional storytelling. The south is no longer imitating Bangkok. It is setting its own terms.

Chefs, Custodians and the Long View

Among the individual honours, the night’s most emotionally grounded moments came with the Chef Awards.

The Best Chinese Chef Award went to Tsai Shih Wei, recognising a discipline that thrives on repetition, restraint and quiet control.

The Perennial Ambassador of Thai Heritage Cuisine Award was presented to Nooror S. Steppe, whose work through Blue Elephant has shaped how traditional Thai cooking is taught, preserved and exported for more than three decades. In a room filled with young innovators and gastronomic futurists, her award carried the weight of continuity.

Emerging talent was acknowledged with the Young Rising Star Chef Award, presented by San Pellegrino’s Filippo Cassabgi to Giuseppe Bonura of Biscotti at Anantara Siam, a chef very much at the beginning of what looks to be a long international career.

Sustainability Moves From Slogan to Standard

Sustainability, once the decorative language of hospitality conferences, took formal shape with the Global Sustainable Gastronomy Awards, presented by Dr Jan Wisansing.

The recipients, Kinnaree by Vanessa WU (Bangkok), Jaras (Phuket) and Sri Trang (Krabi), were recognised for measurable operational change: supplier traceability, waste systems, energy discipline and community engagement.

What distinguished these awards was less rhetoric and more evidence. Sustainability, it seems, has finally graduated from concept to ledger.

Bars, Beaches and the Business of Pleasure

Hospitality’s lighter end was also well covered. Bangkok’s Spectrum Bar & Lounge claimed Top Rooftop Bar, while Penthouse Bar + Grill was named Best Jazz & Cocktail Bar Experience. Over on the islands, Nikki Beach Club Samui took out Best Beach Club in Thailand, confirming once again that Thailand’s version of leisure remains difficult to rival.

Cuisine-specific awards went to NILA (Indian excellence), Sushi Kuuya (Japanese excellence) and OXBO (grilled specialities), a reminder that Thailand’s dining economy now trades in serious variety as well as volume.

A Confident Industry, No Longer Proving Itself

Held at the Hyatt Regency Bangkok Sukhumvit, supported by a coalition of hospitality brands and premium suppliers, the evening was streamlined, polished, and, crucially, self-assured. Thailand’s restaurant industry no longer behaves like an emerging market seeking permission. It now operates like a mature export sector that understands its own value.

The night’s more profound significance lay not in rankings but in geography. By collapsing old regional silos into a national narrative, the TOP25 awards acknowledged what diners already know: Thailand is no longer a single food city with satellite resorts. It is a multi-node culinary economy, distributed, competitive and globally relevant.

And that may be the most important story of all.

Full results are available at: https://www.top25restaurants.com/explore/top25-restaurants-thailand-awards/.