DMV Dining

The places worth eating. And the ones I’m still trying to understand.

The Washingtonian Top 100 is my favorite restaurant list—and my favorite source of irritation.

To be clear, I love that the list exists. It gets people out trying new places and supports local restaurants. That’s a good thing. Somewhere along the way, though, the rankings stopped making sense.

So I decided to eat my way through it—and here are the three problems I found.

Not every great restaurant is competing in the same category.
You can’t compare Rooster & Owl to Yellow. Both are excellent and both deserve recognition, but one is destination-worthy fine dining and the other is an exceptional counter-service operation.
That’s like ranking a Bentley against a bicycle. Both may be best-in-class. They are not competing in the same category.
How far from Washington is still Washington?
Washington has thousands of restaurants inside the Beltway. Yet somehow Annapolis, Centreville, Laurel, and other locations regularly appear on a list supposedly focused on Washington dining. Many of those restaurants are good. Some very much are not.
Is it actually good—or just very good at being talked about?
Some restaurants earn their reputations through years of excellence, while others seem to earn them through social media, marketing, publicity, and momentum. One deserves a ranking. The other deserves scrutiny.