Boston Zagat Guide

I sent in my submissions on Boston area restaurants months ago to the Zagat Guide. Surprisingly, I received this brand new 2007/2008 edition of the Boston Zagat Guide in the mail yesterday, as a thank you gift for contributing my opinions on Boston area restaurants.

I was shocked to learn that Legal Seafoods came up as the most popular restaurant on the list.


Here are Boston's Top Ten Most Popular Restaurants in according to Zagat:

1. Legal Seafoods
2. Blue Ginger
3. Hamersley's Bistro
4. L'Espalier
5. No. 9 Park
6. Mistral
7. Oleana
8. Aujourd'Hui
9. Oishii
10. Abe & Louie's

This list proves my long standing gripe about Boston food media is that they only write about the same ten restaurants. Indeed, alot of those restaurants have big budget PR & Marketing engines, or a celebrity chef with award winning cookbooks and television shows on the market. I do enjoy Ming Tsai's cooking show on PBS, but when does he ever have time to slap on his clogs and get down to cooking between all those takes?

I have no doubt that these establishments have many great things to offer, but frankly I'm bored with this list. I'm on a hunt for interesting new restaurants that offer a complete dining experience from the moment I walk through the door. Value is a concern too. Zagat reports that the average cost of a meal in Boston is $30.78, below the national average of $32.94. This figure reflects a disconnect between this list of the most popular Boston restaurants, where dining will cost you alot more than thirty bucks. It must be true that our favorite places are still the ones where we can only afford to eat at once a year, which in theory, only gives restaurants one shot to make it memorable. So I commend these places for giving us something that, considering all the factors, is so difficult to achieve-something like consistency.