Selecting The 76 is a group effort. To put the list together this year, we asked 18 dining scouts — journalists from across The Inquirer newsroom — to fan out across the Philadelphia region and eat at all kinds of establishments: counters, diners, cafés, food trucks, markets, BYOBs, and high-end restaurants.
As with all Inquirer food coverage, we paid our own way and went in unannounced, save for making reservations. No special treatment and no heads-up to the chefs or owners (or publicists).
Each scout was assigned a list of restaurants to scope out, and all logged a truly heroic amount of eating that took them to every corner of our coverage area. Food reporter Kiki Aranita ate at 74 restaurants, housed 18 banh mi, and spent 27 hours at omakase counters. Interactive developer Jasen Lo dug deep into the fast-growing Indonesian community, finding some truly transcendent sambal. Restaurant critic Craig LaBan tucked into post-Soviet cuisine in Northeast Philly. Reporter Ximena Conde ate through Norristown’s Mexican scene, finding a gem with excellent tamales and $6 margaritas.
After the scouts filed their reports, we sat down as a team and puzzled out how the list would look. It involved some tough choices. Forget comparing apples to oranges, this was comparing sushi to kabobs or rendang to steak frites. Some spots showed promise but we felt weren’t quite worthy of a slot this year, though we’re keeping our eyes on them for 2026. (You can see places that our scouts thought were unfairly denied a spot on this year’s list on our dissents.)
The 76 was always intended as a snapshot of Philly’s cuisine year by year, so it’s no wonder that it shifted a great deal from our inaugural list. Part of that is thanks to the pockets of the region that we were able to send scouts to more thoroughly investigate. There are more entries for Philly’s vast tapestry of immigrant cuisines, particularly Thai, Mexican, Indonesian, and Levantine.
But largely, the 76 is mapping where people are excited to go eat. That includes freshly opened spots, of course, but also community favorites and stand-bys that aren’t as splashy. Next year we hope to stretch our horizons even further, drawing in some of Philly’s bakery boom and keeping our eyes out for new candidates to consider. The list may be capped at 76, but we’re always hungry for more.