Three awards, and nothing that resembles a ranking.

The award the program is named for, and the hardest to earn. It asks a restaurant to be excellent at the thing guests came for and immaculate at the thing they will never see — in the same year, in the same building, with the same crew.

What we look for

• Cooking with a point of view, executed consistently rather than occasionally.
• A health and safety record with no major violations in the reviewed period, and no pattern of repeated minor ones.
• Evidence that standards survive pressure — a full Saturday, a staffing change, a heat wave.
• Straight dealing with guests and staff, as far as the public record and our own visits can show it.

We expect this award to go to a small number of restaurants each year. If no nomination in a county clears the bar, none is given there.

For an unbroken record — every routine visit at the top of the county’s scale, on inspections the restaurant did not schedule and could not prepare for.

What we look for

• A record that is clean on the county’s own terms — across every routine visit on file, not merely the most recent one.
• No closure or suspension.
• Where a minor violation appears, a correction that holds — not the same line item returning visit after visit.
• Enough record under the current owners to describe the kitchen running today.

Because counties grade differently, “the top of the scale” means different things in different places. We define it county by county, and we say which definition we used.

See how the county systems compare

Some restaurants are not trying to be destinations. They are trying to be there — at seven in the morning, on a Tuesday in January, in the fourteenth year. This award is for them.

What we look for

• Independent ownership — a single restaurant, or a small group under the same owners.
• Long enough at the same address to have become part of the street.
• Clean current standing with the county.
• A specific, credible account from the people who eat there of what the place does for the street it sits on.

This is the award where the nomination text matters most. Tell us something only a regular would know.