How We Score
Place Reviews
We're a review aggregator, but not like other review aggregators. Instead of relying on the wisdom of the crowd, we're narrowing it down to people we think know what they're doing. Not your aunt, not your father-in-law — actual reviewers with actual platforms.
The scoring process of an aggregator like this is where things get interesting. Here's how we do it:
First, we apply a score to each award ingested based on its importance and geographic scope. There's a difference between the 99th best restaurant on Earth and the absolute best donut shop in your neighborhood. We're constantly working to capture these differences.
Here are the sources we're currently using (we're adding more to this list almost daily):
- 303 Magazine
- 417 Magazine
- 50 Best
- 50 Top Italy
- 50 Top Pizza
- 5280
- AAA
- Air Canada
- Arizona Daily Star
- Artful Living
- AZ Central
- BagelUp
- Baltimore Beat
- Baltimore Magazine
- Bon Appétit
- Boston Magazine
- Canada's 100 Best
- Charlotte Magazine
- Chinese Restaurant Awards
- Condé Nast Traveler
- Connecticut Magazine
- Cult MTL
- Curated Magazine
- D Magazine
- Dallas Observer
- Eat. Talk. Repeat.
- Eater
- Eating Las Vegas
- Esquire
- Food & Wine
- Foodism
- Foodist Awards
- Forbes Travel Guide
- Gastronomic Salt Lake City
- Golden Owl Awards
- Grub Street
- Honolulu Magazine
- Houston Chronicle
- Houstonia
- Huckberry
- ʻAipono Awards
- Imbibe
- Industry Excellence Awards
- International Baking Industry Expo
- James Beard Awards
- LAist
- Los Angeles Times
- MB100
- MexBest
- Miami New Times
- Michelin Guide
- Midwest Living
- Milwaukee Magazine
- Minnesota Monthly
- Mpls St Paul
- Nashville Scene
- New England
- NJ.com
- Northern Virgina Magazine
- Nova Scotia Restaurant Awards
- OnMilwaukee
- Philadelphia Magazine
- Phoenix Magazine
- Phoenix New Times
- Portland Monthly
- Portland Press Herald
- Premios Nacionales de Gastronomía
- Punch
- QC Exclusive
- Roadbook
- Salt Lake Magazine
- San Antonio Current
- San Antonio Express-News
- San Diego Magazine
- San Francisco Chronicle
- Seattle Met
- Ski
- Spirited Awards
- Sprudge
- Sprudgie Awards
- St. Louis Magazine
- Sunset
- Tastet
- Texas Monthly
- The Austin Chronicle
- The Banchets
- The Infatuation
- The Las Vegas Review Journal
- The New York Times
- The Philadelphia Inquirer
- The Pinnacle Guide
- The Rammys
- The Stranger
- The Washington Post
- The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops
- Thrillist
- Time Out
- Tucson Foodie
- US Coffee Championships
- USA Today
- Vancouver Magazine
- VinePair
- VineRoutes
- Vogue
- Washingtonian
- Westword
- Wildsam
- Wine Enthusiast
- World Culinary Awards
- World's Best Steak Restaurants
Then we calculate a representative average (top 3 awards for now, but this is in flux) of the scores given by each award. We could average all of the awards, but if your pastry shop wins best pastry shop in your suburb and best pastry shop in your country, it seems hardly fair to penalize you for being uniformly excellent.
Then we provide a location-based adjustment based on proximity. A really good pizza place next door is probably going to be a better call on a Thursday night than driving 45 miles to a great one.
What we're left with is a 0–100 score which roughly amounts to how confident we are of the place's quality. All places on the site are award winners to some degree, so there aren't any bad places, but we expect a place with a score of 95 will delight you more than a place with a score of 67.
The scores you see may shift over time as we adjust the algorithm, and we have a lot more in store in terms of what we're aggregating. In the future, we're looking at: hotels, national parks, amusement parks, venues, etc.
Best Place Scores
The real magic of Best, Etc. is the Best Place Scores. The final form of the site isn't one that just aggregates reviews — the goal is to reverse the order of operations and show you how good an area around a place is based on its proximity to other good stuff.
The process is fairly simple:
We take a point on a map, average out the proximity-based things around it, and give it a Best Place Score.
With enough Best Place Scores, we plan to create a data visualization of exactly where you want to be when you go somewhere.
We're still in the early days of Best, Etc., so a lot of this will change over time. Hope you love it!