Eat where the
locals eat.

Most restaurant reviews are gameable, anonymous, or worse: algorithmic. We started Top Tier because food recommendations from someone who’s tasted everything in a category beat a 4.3-star average from strangers, every time. The mechanic is the simplest version of that idea — your top five places, ranked, in a category, in a city.

Lists are personal. Consensus is the public crystallization of all of them. Editorial picks sit alongside the consensus so when there’s a canon worth pointing at, we point.

1. 1

   The City Consensus

   Per (city, category), every public Top 5 is blended with recency, depth, and visit-signal weighting into a single ranking. The math is on /explainer/consensus; the short version is that fresh, deep, on-the-ground rankings count for more than stale ones.

2. 2

   Top 5s from the community

   Individual curator lists, sorted by endorsements. Same data the consensus is built from, but with the curator’s name on it. You’ll find people whose taste you trust faster than you’d trust any algorithm.

3. 3

   Editorial picks

   Sourced from the cities’ most-trusted food publications and signed off by the editorial desk. Cited inline. Never paid for, never traded for.

• S

  No paid placements.

  Restaurants can’t buy a higher rank, a verified badge, or anything else.

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  No engagement-bait notifications.

  One a week, default. No streak guilt.

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  No ads in the content flow.

  Ever.

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  No selling user data.

  Read the privacy policy. We collect what we need to make the consensus work, and nothing else.

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  No dark patterns on sharing.

  Share a list, get a list. No friend-spam, no contact-import nags.

Questions, corrections, restaurant closures, takedown requests, press: write us at support@toptiereats.app. The full support page lives at /support.

Privacy and terms: /privacy · /terms.