USA Today Restaurants of the Year: How we decided which ones made the list for 2024
When food writers dine together, sharing is the norm. Before anyone digs into their own order, plates go around the table so everyone can try a bite or two.
That love of sharing is what spurred the creation of the list of 2024 USA TODAY Restaurants of the Year.
We know other Best Restaurant lists exist. This idea is hardly new. So what makes ours stand out? While other organizations deploy teams of writers to parachute into places and try the food, our journalists live in the communities they cover. The restaurants on our list are places we frequently recommend, places we take friends and family. These places are so lovable, we're often planning our next visit while sitting at the table finishing dinner there.
"Our food writers live here, they work here, they eat here," said Liz Johnson, who is the regional features editor at The Record and northjersey.com and a former food writer and editor who led the project. "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."
You'll notice our list doesn't skip flyover country, like many do. Yes, you can get a great meal in Los Angeles or New York (we have restaurants from those cities on our list, by the way), but you also can have excellent dining experiences in Goshen, Kentucky, or Shreveport, Louisiana or in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University and a wealth of independently owned restaurants, each with its own unique dishes that give residents and visitors reasons to visit often.
Here at home: The Elm is one of the best restaurants in the U.S. What to know before you go
With more than 200 sites in 42 states, the USA TODAY Network's roots run deep. We tapped into that expertise, asking our writers to share their favorites, the best of the best from the towns and cities they cover. We received more than 150 nominations.
A team of seasoned editors and writers then culled the list to 47, looking for places with consistently great service, unique atmospheres and food that never fails to delight.
We also looked for a rich buffet of flavors, and we found it in a third-generation, counter-service seafood shack in Cortez, Florida, a Laotian restaurant in Oklahoma City helmed by a James Beard Award-finalist chef and at Bloomington's The Elm, which offers pastries and coffee in the morning and early afternoon and fine dining and cocktails in the evening.
"For me, reading this list was a delicious journey across America," said Todd Price, who writes about restaurants across the Southeast and is a former James Beard Award nominating committee member. He's one of the writers who helped choose and edit our Restaurants of the Year. "The restaurants, from places large and small, show how varied dining is today in this country. So many other national lists rarely do more than dip their toes outside the biggest cities, and they miss so much of how, and how well, people are eating today in the U.S.A."
Other great places to try: Bloomington restaurants we wish could have made the USA Today list
The majority of the restaurants we've spotlighted are in the communities we cover, though we have a few out-of-town entries. When not covering their home turf, our writers love traveling for food. If we didn't, how would we know how comparably great our hometown spots really are?
Now, we invite you to dig in and enjoy our 2024 Restaurants of the Year.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Here's how we chose our 2024 USA TODAY Restaurants of the Year
