It was a bad day Thursday for pricey top restaurants in San Diego as a new list of the nation’s best 25 eateries failed to include anything in Southern California.
Bouley, the expensive, famed culinary icon of French dining in New York, was rated the number one restaurant in the United States, according to the just-released list from TripAdvisor.com.
The website that rates restaurants, hotels, airlines and tourist attractions based on user reviews found New York to be the center of fine dining in the nation, with five of the restaurants on the top-25 lists being in the “Big Apple.”
Le Bernardin, Daniel, Eleven Madison Park and Per Se were the other award winners from New York.
Major San Diego-area restaurants thought by some local critics to be on a par with New York eateries failed to show up on TripAdvisor’s list. Famed local restaurants top-rated by another user-generated review company, Zagat, include Mille Fleurs in Rancho Santa Fe, A.R. Valentien in Torrey Pines and Addison in Del Mar Mesa. But they were all ignored by TripAdvisor, even though diners can easily spend hundreds of dollars for a night out at any of the three.
But in the continuing rivalry between San Diego and its giant neighbor to the north, at least no Los Angeles restaurants were included in the TripAdvisor list.
While Southern California was snubbed, Northern California was well represented with four winners, including pioneering Chez Panisse in Berkeley, The French Laundry in Yountville and Restaurant Gary Danko and Kokkari Estiatorio, both in San Francisco.
Even Minneapolis, Chicago, Hawaii, Orlando and Houston were on the list, with Charleston, South Carolina having two restaurants in the nation’s top 25.
—City News Service