Announcing the Sustainability Winner from The World's 50 Best Restaurants

The 2026 ceremony for The 50 Best Restaurants took place last night in Lima, Peru, and we’re delighted to share that the winner of this year’s Sustainable Restaurant Award is NAAR in Kasauli, India. Inspired by the dramatic landscape surrounding the restaurant’s remote location, NAAR is designed to celebrate Himalayan cuisine, people and culture, favouring local ingredients and traditional culinary techniques to create a considered, place-led offering.

As our CEO, Juliane Caillouette Noble, said, “NAAR is a highly deserving recipient of the Sustainable Restaurant Award at The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026. From its remote home in the Himalayan foothills, Chef Prateek Sadhu and his team have turned the constraints of place into a source of extraordinary creativity, foraging for wild ingredients and working closely with small-scale producers to build a menu that celebrates the region’s culture, climate and agricultural heritage. Distinctive ingredients such as timru leaf, Kashmiri mushqbudji rice, yak cheese and hisalu berries are reimagined in the very best of ways. 

“What is equally important is the work NAAR is doing outside of the restaurant itself. Through seed-saving and recipe-archiving initiatives developed with partners, and projects such as the women-led Himalayan Hub Cafe Project, it is helping to protect food heritage while creating new opportunities for local communities. NAAR is a powerful example of the role hospitality can play not only in reflecting a place, but in sustaining and enriching the wider life of the world that surrounds it.” 

Read on to learn why NAAR stood out as a clear winner of this award.

Responsible sourcing at NAAR

• NAAR's hyper-seasonal menus are shaped by the unique climate here at the foothills of the Himalayas, which Chef-Owner Prateek Sadhu describes as having six distinct endemic seasons: early winter, winter, spring, summer, monsoon and autumn. 

• With preference given to local and seasonal sourcing, menus are shaped by availability of cultivated and wild ingredients and make use of the traditional culinary techniques that define the gastronomic heritage of this region.

• The reality of NAAR's remote location shapes its supplier network, a community of smallholder farmers, home producers, foragers, local artisans and small businesses just beyond the walls of the 16-seat restaurant. Many of these suppliers do not hold formal certifications or conventional supplier documentation; rather, the business engages with them directly and regularly, evaluating their practices on an individual basis. To work with these specific requirements, NAAR's procurement policy has clear processes for both organised, established suppliers, and informal suppliers.  

• What isn’t sourced from smallholder farmers in the region is grown on-site or foraged in the surrounding area. 

• Both the standard and vegetarian tasting menus highlight ingredients that are characteristic of this region, such as timru leaf, yak cheese, hisalu berries and heritage grains like Kashmiri mushqbudji rice, enabling diners at NAAR to experience a distinct taste of place. 

Social sustainability at NAAR

Beyond the menu, NAAR demonstrates genuine investment in both its staff and the local community.

• Regular performance evaluations and professional development opportunities stand to support the career progression of staff.

• NAAR’s Employee Handbook is thorough and clearly outlines expectations, policies and benefits, including leave, prevention of sexual harassment, professional development, diversity and management of staff data. 

• Beyond the walls of the business itself, Chef-Owner Prateek Sadhu’s foundation works to safeguard India's culinary and agricultural heritage as a pathway to community empowerment and sustainable development. Projects include seed saving and promotion of heritage ingredients, recipe archiving and documentation of food practices. 

• Launched in the past year, The Himalayan Hub Cafe Project (run out of the Royal Enfield Himalayan Basecamp) is a women-led enterprise that provides NSQF-aligned culinary training to women from the region, promoting careers in hospitality. 

Environmental impact at NAAR

• NAAR’s short supply chains — both an intentional effort and a practical choice due to the inherent challenges of NAAR’s location — keep the restaurant’s transport-related carbon footprint low.

• NAAR translates to ‘fire’ in Kashmiri, so it’s particularly apt that a majority of the cooking here is done over wood flame rather than gas, reducing the restaurant’s reliance on fossil fuels and making use of a locally available resource. 

• Menus at NAAR focus on whole ingredient utilisation, with food waste designed out from the get-go. Secondary parts of ingredients are actively incorporated into dishes through stocks and sauces, ferments and other preserves and garnishes.  

• The kitchen makes use of traditional, low-energy preservation methods such as fermentation, drying, salting, curing and smoking. These methods require little input other than time, extending the useable life of ingredients while honouring local heritage and adding depth of flavour.  

Interested in how your own sustainability work measures up? Take our free, five-minute Food For Thought quiz to find out, or get in touch to learn how The SRA can support your progress.    

Read more about NAAR on their website. You can learn more about our work with The 50 here and discover previous winners of the sustainability awards here.    

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Lead photo from the NAAR Instagram page.