I really dislike the end-of-year roundups found on most websites. Ensuring that loyal readers have something to read over the quiet Christmas/New Year’s/Winterval period is admirable; cynically regurgitating old content and presenting it as new is not. I’m particularly against concocting a dull list of my ‘favourite’ restaurants of the past year – if you want to see what I’ve really liked over the past year, just click ★★★★★. That link is always available on the sidebar of every webpage on this site. Simple. Done.
What’s far more interesting, to me at least, is which restaurants my readers have liked and visited over the past year. In previous years I’ve relied on my records of which reviews have been read most frequently. This year, I’ve also used the statistics listing which restaurants’ websites you’ve all clicked on – hopefully giving a more accurate picture of which restaurants you’ve all actually eaten at, rather than just read about. The results, as ever, are illuminating. Here are the top 14 in descending order:
- Smokestak
- Miss P’s Barbecue
- Texas Joe’s
- Flat Iron
- Meat Lover
- Pitt Cue
- Bao London
- Tonkotsu
- Hawksmoor (aggregate for all branches)
- Mestizo
- Kirazu
- Orchard
- Bone Daddies
- Osteria Tufo
I chose a Top 14 rather than a Top 10 to give the list a little more variety, since the list would otherwise be dominated by American barbecue eateries, plus the top two are actually market stalls rather than sit-down restaurants. Your keen interest in high quality American-style barbecue warms my otherwise, cold, frigid heart.
Your passion for steak and ramen continues unabated, with Hawksmoor, Flat Iron, Tonkotsu, Kirazu and Bone Daddies figuring highly. Surprisingly, you lot don’t seem to care that much for Mexican food – of all the burrito and taco eateries I reviewed in the past year, only Mestizo seems to have captured your imagination.
Another set of surprises was the appearance of vegetarian cafe Orchard, Taiwanese bun stall Bao London and small north London Italian restaurant Osteria Tufo on the list. It seems that you’re not all single-minded meat fiends, which gives me hope for your continued, collective cardiovascular health. May we all survive another year unscathed.
-The Picky Glutton
