Our 2025 ranking of the Top 50 Restaurants marks my biggest list yet for the Tampa Bay Times.
Last year’s list included 30 contenders. I, perhaps naively, imagined that broadening my scope to include 20 additional restaurants would somehow make my job easier. Spoiler alert: It didn’t. In fact, expanding the list to 50 made it feel more difficult. Casting a wider net and considering more restaurants than ever before forced me to be more selective.
On Friday, we’ll share therestaurants ranked 41 through 50. Every day after that, we’ll release 10 more, culminating with a live reveal of the top 10 restaurants at St. Petersburg’s Coastal Creative on Tuesday night.
By Wednesday morning, you’ll be able to find the full list online at tampabay.com and in your print and e-Newspaper editions. Subscribers to our weekly Do & Dine newsletter will receive the complete ranking of the Top 50 Restaurants on Tuesday night, before it’s published in print. Sign up to be among the first to see the full list.
Putting together this ranking was truly a labor of love that stretched across multiple departments in our newsroom. I want to answer, in as much detail as possible, the many, many questions I’ve been asked about what goes into compiling it.
From start to finish, this is what putting together my Top 50 Restaurants list entailed.
Wheneating at a new restaurant, I’m particularly interested in how that spot fits into our dining landscape. What does this restaurant say about how diners are choosing to eat right now? Does the place feel contemporary, exciting or interesting? What is the chef doing that’s different or novel? And — this is top of mind lately — is the restaurant priced accordingly? Does a meal there feel worth it?
Of course, excellent food is still the most important thing. If a restaurant isn’t delivering at least that, or if I have a couple of bad meals at a spot, that’s usually enough to knock it off the list.
I considered any meal I had between October 2024 and November 2025 for this list, with one caveat: We decided that restaurants that opened after July 31 were not in contention.That means places like 86 Wine Bar in St. Petersburg and Kinjo in Tampa were not included in this round (but will certainly be considered next year). But this year was a blockbuster for restaurant openings, and several newer spots did make the cut.
I included some non-traditional restaurants like pop-ups and food trucks on this year’s list, something we haven’t done in past years. Tampa Bay’s culinary scene is dynamic and constantly evolving. If diners were responding to concepts like these, and if they were making truly exceptional meals, well, that felt like more than enough reason to include them.
Believe it or not, my editor, Michelle Stark, and I started talking about this year’s list roughly a week after last year’s published. We knew we wanted to do a biggerroundup and a much bigger reveal event, and planning for that would take time.
I did the majority of my dining between July and October this year. But Top Restaurants is a project I’m always chipping away at and constantly thinking about. I consumed hundreds of meals over the year that I took into consideration.
In early January, I look at my year and set story goals — big and small — and a loose review schedule. I try to set aside enough time to eat at several spots per month for research purposes only. I also have to manage the budget the newsroom sets aside for dining out. Often, during those meals, I’ll see a trend that can be pulled into a separate story, but the real purpose of the visit is to assess the restaurant’s quality, consistency and whether they warrant a spot on the upcoming list.
While dining out, I’m constantly taking photographs: of menus, of dishes and of the overall restaurant setting. I organize those photos with my notes on my phone before moving them to a separate document.
Now I also do something else that’s helped me meet deadlines (and retain my sanity): make a back-out schedule. I first learned about these while working on a project with the Tampa Bay Times investigativeteam a few years ago. Basically, it’s a spreadsheet I use to work backwards and figure out how many meals need to be clocked before I can start writing. Every two weeks or so, I re-tally and adjust.
Then comes the writing.Churning out 10,000 words takes time. I probably spent three full weeks writing this list, including time for editing. The last month before publication is when things get really hectic, and multiple departments — design, photography, copy editing, engagement and marketing — jump in to help.
Ranking all 50 restaurants was incredibly difficult. And it wasn’t a decision that came easily, at least to me: What makes something No. 37 versus No. 43, for instance? It can feel arbitrary. But we decided a fully ranked list would be of interest to our readers.
Throughout the past four months, I’ve carried around a white legal pad on which I would occasionally try to rank the entire list from memory. In the beginning, I didn’t have much of an idea which spots would even be on the list, so I started by writing down every single Tampa Bay restaurant I thought may warrant inclusion (roughly 100) and then whittled them down, one meal at a time.
A couple weeks before publication, Michelle and I locked ourselves in my home office with a whiteboard and ranked the entire list, one by one. It was wildly helpful to have my editor thereas we considered why a certain spot was listed above or below another. Michelle asked tough questions, and I wentto bat for the spots I believed needed to be higher.
To a certain extent, yes: This is my list, after all, the restaurants I believe represent the best and brightest of Tampa Bay’s culinary scene right now. But I’ve been a restaurant critic for over a decade, and I’d like to think this list fuses my opinion and experiences with a historical framework to best showcase how the Tampa Bay culinary world has evolved.
I’ve come to learn there is no perfectway to put together a list like this. With a dining landscape as diverse and expansive as ours, eating at every single restaurant is, well, impossible. But I’d like to think I’ve put in a valiant effort to cover the region comprehensively, and to place these 50 restaurants in a contemporary climate that speaks to a diverse group of local diners, not just a select few.
Feedback from readers, colleagues and other restaurant industry insiders has also proved tremendously helpful. I hopethis list will serve as a roadmap for how we choose to dine right now and where we might be headed in the future.