Yelp’s annual list of the top “100 Places to Eat in the U.S.” came out Tuesday, and like everything about the website that allows you to rate local businesses, the results are unexpected bordering on the bizarre.
Unlike other restaurant lists, where critics rank the options according to whatever personal criteria they choose, Yelp uses hard data. No fickle food preferences here. The company apparently used “25 million new reviews” for this list. It also considered “both the rating and the volume of the reviews, while accounting for the overall volume of reviews in each business’s area so as not to disadvantage businesses in areas with relatively low review volume.”
That explains why the top rated restaurant of the year is Bangers & Brews in Bend, a town in central Oregon with a population of about 90,000. For what it’s worth, the local newspaper, The Bend Bulletin, only gave the restaurant three out of four stars, praising the adventurous menu, but also noting that some of the sausages were dry.
Major cities did not do well. Only two restaurants from Los Angeles made the cut, which is the same number as from New York City. In what may be a first for a national restaurant list, zero of those restaurants were in Manhattan.
Food for thought: Are the restaurants really better outside of large cities, or are the Yelp users in cities just a crankier and less easy to please bunch? I suppose we’ll never know.
This makes the fact that Chicago scored just three entries not so disappointing. But what did make the list here? Girl & the Goat or Frontera, right? Of course, not! How about Bistro 6050 (#65) and The Crepe Shop (#87), two restaurants I had never heard of before. I have been to the third, Nini’s Deli (#86), which serves a killer ropa vieja burrito.
What’s more shocking is that the highest-rated local option isn’t in the city limits. In fact, it’s in Waukegan, a town so far north it barely qualifies as a Chicago suburb. Because I worked in the town for a couple of years, I’m actually quite familiar with Papa Marcos Grill And Kabob (#57). It’s genuinely one of the friendliest family-run restaurants I’ve been to, even if there are more ambitious Middle Eastern restaurants around.
But how does it makes sense that Pappa Gyros, a restaurant specializing in Chicago-style street food (gyros and Italian beefs) in Katy, Texas, managed to snag the No. 12 spot, which is higher than any restaurant in Chicago?
I have to admit that I actually use Yelp quite a bit. It’s helpful for locating new restaurants and for getting a sense of what the food may be like. I just don’t pay much attention to the actual star ratings. This list is a good example of why.
nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @nickdk
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