Conflicts of interest, non-transparent criteria, media and social media: my conversation with Charles Carnival on what lies behind the rankings of the world's best bars. And why perhaps we should return to looking at what really happens behind the bar, rather than focusing on the numbers.
In the world of bars, there are things everyone thinks about but almost no one says out loud. They're discussed at trade shows, during guest shifts, in private messages, over a drink after the microphones are turned off. But then, when it comes time to actually write them down, they suddenly become much more complicated. Charles Carnival did the opposite. Starting from the analysis of Europe's 50 Best BarsIn recent weeks, the Campanian journalist has questioned in one of his articles not just the rankings, but the system that surrounds them: who votes, how they vote, who reports the results, what interests are at play, and how much all this still has to do with what really happens behind the counter.
We talked about it in front of a Martini, because perhaps there was no better way to approach such a topic. A drink that, in the bar world, has almost become a unit of measurement: essential, recognisable, apparently simple and for this very reason difficult to judge.As we talk about it, it occurs to me that rankings are a bit like this: they seem simple because they return a number, a position, a winner. But behind that number lies a much more complex system. And almost inevitably, the first question we raise is also the most uncomfortable: the conflict of interest.
“The potential conflict of interest arises, among other things, from the fact that voting or being a Country Representative, or CR, are unpaid positions,” Carlo begins. "There are certainly special experiences and opportunities to travel at certain levels, but the possibility of making some money remains and can justify the commitment one puts into this role. Voters are chosen by the RCs, and there must be a mix of bartenders, bar owners, media, and this unspecified 'well-traveled cocktail expert,' so anyone who goes to bars."
Put like that, it seems almost impossible to get around the problem. The world of bars functions precisely through relationships: people get to know each other, work together, invite each other, host each other, do guest shifts, travel. Selecting people completely unfamiliar with the industry would be absurd; expecting them to have no personal or professional relationships with anyone is simply unrealistic. This is precisely why, in my opinion, the focus shouldn't be on the illusion of eliminating every possible conflict, but on making it understandable. We cannot expect a system without relationships, but we can expect a system that knows how to declare them.
The definition of “well-traveled cocktail expert”, however, doesn't help. It almost seems like a profession invented by LinkedIn at 3 a.m., but behind that formula lies a very real question: who decides whether a person has the authority to judge the best bars in Europe? This term is clearly dangerous, because it could actually be anyone. By establishing a cyclical pattern whereby these names change every two or three years, we can probably avoid forging long-lasting relationships that could lead to conflicts of interest. There's no real solution, especially when there are no alternatives to the 50 Best. It might be interesting to see alternative rankings, with challenging structures. Right now 50 Best does what it wants, monopolizes the market", my interlocutor continues.
Perhaps the real problem is that we've stopped considering 50 Best for what it is—a ranking—and have started considering it a quality certification. It's one thing to say that fifty people, based on their own experience, chose those fifty bars; it's another to transform that list into a kind of Gospel of the cocktail. Europe's 50 Best Bars carries enormous weight: the bars that make the list have it, of course, but so do the brands, events, travel, investments, and media that revolve around those results. A ranking can change the perception of a venue far more than a review can, and consequently, its revenue as well. The more weight a ranking gains, the more its relevance should grow. responsibility in explaining how it works.
On this point, however, a clarification is necessary: the official system states that panels are updated annually and that their composition seeks to maintain a balance between drink writers, bartenders, and cocktail aficionados. It's therefore incorrect to describe the system as if panels were immutable or composed without any logic. But precisely this gap between what the system declares and what the industry perceives makes the discussion interesting. Because ultimately, the question remains: If a ranking decides who is excellent, shouldn't it at least clearly explain why? There needs to be more transparency about the criteria. I need to understand why one bar is rated better than another. Even if you just tell me that this one has the best ice, or that bars are ranked based on a total score of ten criteria: music, ice, tapas, glass color, you name it. If these criteria aren't specified, the reasoning behind one being rated better than another will always remain very vague. suggests Carnival.
I agree with this only up to a point. I'm not sure I'd want to see a ranking of the best bars reduced to a report card: A bar is not a refrigerator to be reviewed based on ten technical features. There's something irreducibly subjective about the hospitality experience: a room, a bartender, an atmosphere, a way of standing at the bar. And perhaps that's precisely the beauty of it. But if the judgment is subjective, then we need to be even clearer in stating it. The official system specifies that the ranking is the result of Academy members' votes and that there are no pre-established technical criteria that a bar must necessarily meet: the judgment is left to the voters' personal experience. So the question changes slightly: How discretionary should a ranking that claims to represent excellence be?
The case of the Mirror Bar of Bratislava, in front of the The Connaught Bar of London, makes the issue almost tangible. "If the Mirror Bar in Bratislava, which is an excellent hotel bar, is rated higher than the Connaught, I have to understand how a better hotel bar can exist and why. I think we're all pretty convinced that the Connaught has perhaps been the benchmark for hotel bars for at least a decade. I just have to figure it out.", Carlo still states.
Personally, I'm not at all shocked that the Mirror Bar could be in front of the Connaught. On the contrary, If it really is better, I also want to know why. This is what a ranking should do: make me want to understand, not simply ask me to trust. The reference is to the Mirror Bar at the Radisson Blu Carlton Hotel in Bratislava, which in 2026 actually ranked number 8 in Europe's 50 Best Bars and also received the Michter's Art of Hospitality Award. The point, therefore, is not to establish whether the number 8 is "correct." None of us has the tools to transform an aesthetic and human judgment into a mathematical truth. Such a significant result should, however, generate an equally significant explanation.
In the meantime the Martini is almost finished and the conversation between me and Carlo inevitably turns to the averageThis is perhaps the area where the problem becomes even more evident, because we can endlessly discuss the ranking mechanism, but then we are the ones who transform those numbers into a story. It's very easy to write “the five best bars in Milan”It's much more difficult to explain what it really means to run a bar, how much work goes into it, how to build a cocktail program, and above all whether that establishment is economically sustainable. "The industry media is very young, especially in Italy. The world of bars and mixology has gained visibility and is therefore being discussed, while abroad, especially in the United States, there is a much broader literature. It's difficult to find authoritative and competent voices, because it's one thing to write about cocktails, and another to write about bars: they are much deeper substrata than simple recipes.".
It's a point that makes me think especially about how much we've talked about cocktails as if they were bars. A recipe is easy to talk about. An exotic ingredient works well in a title. A bartender from who knows where is an easy story to sell. But talking about a bar means talking about so much more: service, staff, shifts, training, margins, rents, suppliers, customers, mistakes, management. It also means having the courage to say that an extraordinary bar can be, simultaneously, a fragile undertaking. And this is something I still see too little of in contemporary reporting on the industry. Because behind the photograph of a perfect cocktail, there's often a financial statement that no one wants to talk about. A bar can be packed during a guest shift and empty the following Wednesday. It can have an extraordinary menu and still be unable to sustain the cost of a team. It can become an international phenomenon and still have enormous difficulty turning its visibility into a viable business. I don't think this should necessarily be included in a ranking of the best bars, but I do believe it should be part of the way we report on the industry.
"You find everyone from small-time influencers to bloggers, from those who don't write for a living to those who finally are journalists and do it for a living. You find them all in the same pot. There's very little differentiation to understand what's a quality media outlet and what isn't.", Carnival decrees. “But part of the responsibility is also ours,” This is my reply. We cannot complain about the fact that influencers, bloggers and journalists are lumped together if then, sometimes, we produce exactly the same type of content. If a press release becomes an article, if a ranking is repeated without being questioned, if a cocktail is described only through the list of ingredients, if every place is "unmissable," "iconic," "revolutionary," or "among the best," words ultimately lose value. And then the problem is no longer just distinguishing those who do journalism from those who do communication. It is go back to doing bar journalism.
"Those who serve drinks or are part of the system can discern what constitutes a valid publication. The problem is that for the consumer, who should remain the ultimate goal, this distinction in quality isn't there. There continues to be a flood of content about the five best bars to go to in Brera, but there's not much that truly tells the consumer what the entire world of bars means. It takes a sensitivity, a preparation, a skill that I feel is rather rarefied right now."This is probably the part where I agree with Carlo the most. The reader doesn't just need us to tell him where to goHe needs us to explain to him because it's worth going there. And above all, we must give them the tools to understand. A consumer should be able to read about a bar and understand whether they're choosing a sophisticated cocktail bar, a luxury hotel bar, a neighborhood venue, a place built around hospitality, or a project born primarily for image enhancement. This doesn't mean making everything complicated. It means stopping treating the reader as someone who simply needs a list.
At this point the problem seems to me to be inevitably bigger than the 50 Best. Why We can argue for hours about who deserves first place, but what does excellence really mean? A bar can be a wonder on Instagram and yet have an empty dining room on Wednesday nights. It can have an extraordinary cocktail program and still be unable to pay its employees. It can shift guests for the year and close three months later. It can be photographed, talked about, awarded, become an international destination, and then fail to turn all that attention into a sustainable business. And here the question directly affects our work as journalists: Are we telling the story of excellence or are we telling the story of what is easier to recognize as excellence? Because they're not necessarily the same thing. A bar full of photographers is visible. A bar that manages to maintain a team for years is much less so. A spectacular cocktail ends up on Instagram. A good internal training system doesn't. A ranking can be published in a day. Building a business that lasts ten years takes a decade.
Maybe we should go back to considering this too when we talk about “best bars in the world”: the ability to be excellent when there are no photographers, brands, rankings, or followers. When it's just a random Tuesday and it's raining outside. The true test of a bar, perhaps, is precisely that: when nobody is looking. That's why I don't think the rankings themselves are the problem. They can be fun, useful, even necessary. They can raise awareness of places that would otherwise remain under the radar and can push the industry to engage. The problem arises when a ranking becomes an indisputable truth and when everything around it – media, social media, brands, events and communications – stops asking why.
In short, I don't think we need to stop celebrating the best bars. I think we need to go back to asking ourselves what it means to be better. Don't stop talking about cocktails, but also about the people and businesses that make them possible. Don't stop reading the rankings, but learn to see them for what they are: a point of view, not a sentence. The question, in the end, isn't just who's first. It's: Why? And perhaps, even before: Who decided it, on the basis of what and what does that excellence really mean when the spotlight goes out?
To answer these not simple questions, or at least to try to broaden the discussion further, I asked the publisher Laura Carello: “Reading the analysis of Carlo Carnevale and James Jacobellis, The first reaction wasn't gut instinct, but the awareness that a veil of uncertainty had been lifted that had become too cumbersome. Rankings, created to celebrate excellence, risk turning into a theater of influence where the essence of service is lost. It's not about being a naysayer at all costs, but about asking ourselves honestly: who really needs all this? The bars, the customers, or just the circus that surrounds us? If we don't start demanding a more transparent version, rooted in the economic and human reality of bars, we risk finding ourselves with a bar industry that's beautiful on social media, but empty at the bar.
