Chicago Dominates Business Insider's List Of Best Restaurants In America

By Anthony Todd in Food on Jul 24, 2017 2:26PM

The signature (awesome) chicken at Roister. Photo via Facebook.

Business Insider isn't generally known for restaurant criticism, so I was a bit surprised to see them issue a "50 best restaurants in America" list. They've taken a data-driven approach, using many existing lists, combining them, and assigning points to create what they see as a "definitive" master list of best restaurants. Chicago did pretty darn well.

BI wrote an entire separate article describing their methodology:

"The lists we used were The Daily Meal’s 101 Best Restaurants in America, OpenTable’s 100 Hottest Restaurants in America, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, the James Beard Foundation’s 2017 Restaurant and Chef Award Semifinalists, Eater’s The National 38, and the Michelin Guide."

Depending on the unique qualities of each list, entries on that list got different point totals which were combined to make the final list. What were the results?

As you'd expect from a list of lists, there is absolutely nothing surprising here at all. The same places found in most guidebooks got mentioned, but it's nice to see Chicago (recently called the best restaurant city in America) get so much love, with 9 entries out of a 50-restaurant list.

These included:

Next
Grace
Roister
Everest
Spiaggia
Blackbird
Oriole
Topolobampo
Alinea

Of course, Alinea is number one in America, beating out Eleven Madison Park and Le Bernardin. Next barely made it onto the list at #50, and I'm happy to see Roister getting some love at #42, though who would have predicted when Roister opened that it would beat out its much more hyped cousin with the ever-shifting menu.