Small, Personal, Veg-Friendly Restaurants Top 'Foodies' List
You don't have to cook in New York to get recognized for excellence.
— -- There are 990,000 restaurant locations throughout the U.S., according to the National Restaurant Association's latest figures. All of them are vying for your dining dollar, but some deserve it more than others.
Today the weak have been separated from the wonderful.
After surveying more than 5 million verified diner reviews for roughly 20,000 restaurants in 50 states and D.C., preeminent online restaurant reservation service OpenTable has announced their Diner’s Choice Award winners for the Top 100 Fit for Foodie Restaurants in the United States.
A handful of trends emerged revealing dining preferences across state lines.
Here are the four biggest findings:
New Spots are Most Hot
While the old guard will always have a place in the reservation book, diners are increasingly rewarding young chefs with less experience who achieve excellence.
"The majority of the restaurants on this list have opened since 2011 and sometimes in just this year alone," Caroline Potter, Chief Dining Officer at OpenTable.com said. "They have a very clear vision of their concept and their food is being executed consistently.
"There also definitely seems to be a trend that these chefs are on the younger side," she added. "It just felt like there were a lot of chefs under 40 and some under 30. It's no longer the case that you have to work and work and work for years to be highly revered."
Good Things Come in Small Packages, and Smaller Cities
"In New York, you always think 'go big or go home,'" said Potter. "But on this list many of the restaurants are very modest in size so everything feels very personal. One example would be Laurel in Philadelphia. Chef Nicholas Elmi just won Top Chef and could have opened a gigantic dining hall in New York but instead he opened a BYOB restaurant in his home town with just 22 seats."
Keeping things scalable and sustainable is something chefs across the country are doing in an effort to keep kitchen performance consistent.
"Cambridge, Indianapolis and Steamboat Springs, Portland and Philadelphia are all absolutely teeming with fantastic area restaurants," said Potter. "These people aren’t biting off more than they can chew they are realizing you don’t need to open your restaurant in New York to be taken seriously anymore--and you may be more profitable."
Veggies are Claiming the Spotlight
The farm-to-table label may be ubiquitous, but most restaurants exceeding at their service have "deep relationships with their growers and producers, and a respectable percentage of them even have their own gardens," said Potter.
They are also increasingly putting veggies front and center.
"Four or five of the restaurants listed consider themselves vegan or vegetarian, such as Vedge or Dirt Candy, and even those that aren’t feature veggie-centric meals on the menu," she said. We’ve seen over the last two years that vegetables have come into their own."
Foodie Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Fancy
"Most of these restaurants are affordable, not just special occasion or destination restaurants," said Potter.
To wit, on the list of 100 Top Foodie establishments, 29 restaurants are less than $30 and 39 restaurants cost $31 to $50.
It follows then that many of the restaurants are also more relaxed when it comes to decor and dress code.
"As with the attire, at most of these restaurants the atmosphere is more relaxed and casual. People are dressing nice but you don’t feel like you have to wear a suit and tie."
For the complete list of Top 100 Fit for Foodies Restaurants in America, visit OpenTable.
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