How we rank restaurants

Every County Eats list is built the same way, so a "best of" in Solano County means the same thing as one in San Francisco.

What we look at

Agreement across sources. We read how diners rate a restaurant on Google Maps, Yelp and Beli, and what local critics and guides such as the Michelin Guide and the San Francisco Chronicle have written about it. We weigh how many people have rated a place, not only the average: a restaurant loved everywhere with thousands of reviews ranks above a newer place with a perfect score from a handful of visits. Ratings are a starting point, not the ranking itself.
Regional character. We favor restaurants that cook a specific regional style well over menus that try to cover everything. A Hunan restaurant that does Hunan food is more useful to you than a general menu with one smoked pork dish.
Consistency over time. Places that have held up for years rank above recent openings with a single strong month, unless the new place is clearly special.
The dishes. For every pick we name what to order. If we cannot say what a restaurant does best, it does not make the list.
Public records. Where a county publishes restaurant inspection results, we check them, and we leave out a restaurant with a recent closure order.
Still open. We confirm each restaurant is operating at the address we list before a guide is published, and again when we update it.

What we leave out

Paid placement. Restaurants cannot buy a spot or a better rank.
Free meals in exchange for coverage.
Chains with more than a handful of locations, unless the Bay Area location is the original or genuinely better.

The County Eats score

Every ranked pick carries a County Eats score out of 100. It scores a restaurant for one thing, the signature dish we name beside it, so a Sichuan kitchen and a dim sum hall can be compared on how good each is at what it does. The score adds up five parts:

Part	What it measures	Points
Dish reputation	How consistently critics and diners name this dish here as one of the best of its kind in the Bay Area	30
Diner consensus	Ratings on Google Maps, Yelp and Beli, weighted toward places with many reviews over places with a perfect score from a few	25
Critical recognition	Michelin star 20, Michelin Bib Gourmand 16, San Francisco Chronicle Top 100 14, regular inclusion in other major guides 10	20
Regional character	How specifically and faithfully the kitchen cooks the style of its region	15
Staying power	15 or more years open 10, 10 to 14 years 8, 5 to 9 years 6, 2 to 4 years 4, under 2 years 2	10

What the numbers mean:

90 and up: a Bay Area benchmark for this dish. Worth planning a trip around.
80 to 89: among the best of its kind in the county. Worth a drive.
70 to 79: a strong local pick. Worth a stop if you are nearby.

We only rank picks that score 70 or higher. A restaurant we like but cannot yet score with confidence appears in a guide's "Also worth knowing" list without a number.

The score is our editorial judgment, built from the public record: reviews, ratings, critics and how long a place has lasted. It is not a lab test, and it changes when the evidence does. Ratings platforms change daily, so we do not copy their star ratings onto our pages; the score is our own reading of them.

Dates and updates

Every guide shows the date it was published or last updated. When a pick closes or slips, we update the guide and change that date.