Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Dear Ed,

Over the last 27 years, Zagat Survey has provided a trusted forum for the organized word of mouth of more than 250,000 surveyors worldwide. Zagat’s success is based entirely on the trust and loyalty of our valued customers, surveyors and the public at-large. So maintaining the integrity of our content has always been our number one priority.

And let me be perfectly clear, Nina and I have never voted in any of our surveys since day one.

Having said that, let me take a moment to explain to you and your readers how the list of Top NYC Newcomers was determined.

This past year, 31,604 surveyors were asked to rate the restaurants they visited on a 0-3 scale (0=fair-poor, 1=good, 2=very good, 3=excellent) in three different categories - Food, Décor, and Service. The ratings are then averaged and multiplied by 10 and rounded to the nearest whole number (i.e., a 2.54722 becomes a 25). Thus, this year’s list, based entirely on our surveyors’ Food ratings, produced the following list of Top Newcomers:

Telepan 25.4722

The Orchard 25.0617

Ureña 24.5070

A Voce 23.5416

Morimoto 23.4710

Country 23.3576

Del Posto 23.1836

Cookshop 23.1619

Buddakan 23.0000

Bouchon Bakery 22.5899

And by the way, Nina and I have made the trip down to Del Posto many more times than we have visited Telepan, though we have enjoyed them both very much.

Tim Zagat