FROM JACOB RICHLER – EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants is something entirely new. It is a magazine conceived to satisfy a keen and hungry market in a fresh and original way. It aims to be indispensable to anyone genuinely interested in dining out in this country in an informed way. And it intends to serve as the definitive pillar of any sensible discussion about the quality of our restaurants and in particular how they stack up when compared to another across the street, or on the opposite coast—or even to themselves from one year to another.
This is how.
While most restaurant guides depend almost exclusively on the subjective opinions of a critic, and a handful get by on opinions gathered from the general public, we propose something different that incorporates the best of both—and a whole lot more.
We have consulted critics—but rather than rely too heavily on the opinions of a single one, we have polled the opinions of all the best ones we know. We have consulted the dining public—but only those professionals among them who travel and dine out extensively and have a keenly informed sense of what a good restaurant should be. And lastly we have balanced these opinions with those of the only true experts in the field: those who excel in it as chefs and restaurateurs.
Seventy such experts were selected from each province, according to its population. Each was asked to submit a list of what they considered to be the 10 best restaurants in the country.
Needless to say (I hope), no judge was allowed to vote for a restaurant in which he or she held a financial or professional interest. The list of restaurants they submitted had to be ranked in order of preference from first place to 10. Those individual rankings were translated by the editors into points. And thus from 70 individual ballots we arrived at a national scorecard, which we translated into the ranking you see here.
It reflects indisputable expertise. So we see it as an exercise in fairness. And something that everyone in this country who brings passion and standards to the pleasure of dining out can use to help make better choices. We also see it as a means to reward and encourage everyone who excels at the trade, pushing them harder, noting failures and applauding genuine success, and in the process improving our already vibrant dining scene—for everyone, from coast to coast.
We hope that you agree.
Jacob Richler