It’s always great to see Lebanese cuisine getting recognized internationally and having our dishes, salads or dips ranked among the best in the world, but it’s also good to look at these ratings and understand the logic behind them to avoid any future disappointments.

TasteAtlas has recently shared a list of the world’s best dips with Mutabbal, Hummus Beiruti & Toum on top. Before that, Fattoush & Tabboule make it to the top 100 salads in the world.

There’s no denying that these salads & dips should rank highly, but the ratings are only based on the ratings of the TasteAtlas audience “with a series of mechanisms that recognize real users and that ignore bot, nationalist or local patriotic ratings, and give additional value to the ratings of users that the system recognizes as knowledgeable”.

That said, even though Hummus & Moutabbal topped the ratings, Warak Enab, Fatayer & Kaak were among the worst rated foods in Lebanon, and Beirut was shockingly enough not even mentioned in the best 100 cities to try local food.

The whole idea from this site is to promote local cuisine worldwide and I think they’re doing a great job despite the inconsistencies. At least they put Hummus as Lebanese 😁.

On a side note, how the hell did Mutabbal rank higher than Hummus? I personally prefer it to Hummus but I always thought I’m a minority.