2024 USA TODAY Restaurants of the Year: How we decided who made the list

Wilmington StarNews
·2 min read

It’s one of the most common questions when visiting a new place: “Where should I go to eat?”

Answers can be found all around, whether you consult a well-traveled friend, strangers on social media or online reviews.

Allow us to introduce another option: Our inaugural list of 2024 USA TODAY Restaurants of the Year. 

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Plenty of other Best Restaurant lists exist, offering their take on standouts. So what makes our list stand out? For one, we pulled together the expertise of journalists who live in the places they cover. This is not compiled by writers who swooped into cities like Wilmington for a weekend.

The restaurants on this list are the ones we’d take our family members to for a special night out. If an old friend was visiting and asked where to eat, these are the restaurants we’d recommend.

Catch restaurant in Wilmington is one of USA Today's 47 Restaurants of the Year for 2024.
Catch restaurant in Wilmington is one of USA Today's 47 Restaurants of the Year for 2024.

"Our food writers live here, they work here, they eat here," said project leader Liz Johnson, senior director at The Record and northjersey.com and a former food writer. "They know their beats. These may not be the fanciest restaurants in the U.S.A., though some are. These are the restaurants we want to eat at over and over again."

Our list is also unique because it truly covers the country. Let’s hear it for representation of restaurants in cities beyond Los Angeles or New York. The list praises places in Bloomington, Indiana, and Shreveport, Louisiana.

The USA TODAY Network is made up of 200 sites in 42 states and our writers worked together to share favorite restaurants in the communities we cover. More than 150 restaurants were nominated, and that number was whittled down to 47, including two in North Carolina.

How many have you been to? Check out USA TODAY's 2024 Restaurants of the Year.

A team of seasoned editors and writers considered the restaurants with great service, interesting atmospheres, and food that keeps you coming back.

They also looked for a spread full of different flavors and feels. The list includes a seafood shack, a Laotian restaurant, and a farm-to-table spot in an old Kentucky barn.

Now, we invite you to dig in and enjoy the USA TODAY Restaurants of the Year 2024, including Catch in Wilmington.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: North Carolina made 2024 USA TODAY Restaurants of the Year: Here's how