How we rank
The method is deterministic and boring on purpose. Here it is, in full.
The blend
Places come from one rating source, Foursquare. We are built to blend several and to reward the ones every source agrees on, but with a single source there is no agreement to reward, so no place is getting that bonus today. We would rather say that than imply a consensus we do not have.
Adjusted ratings
A 5.0 from three reviewers is not better than a 4.6 from four hundred. Every rating is pulled toward the neighborhood average in proportion to how few people reviewed it, so tiny sample sizes stop winning.
Chains
A chain is checked against a list of names, and losing that check costs more than any other single thing in the ranking. You do not need us to tell you a chain is there, and its rating describes the brand rather than the branch. It can still appear when there is genuinely nothing else nearby. The list is much better in English-speaking countries than elsewhere, which is a real limit and not a claim we want to dress up.
The tourist-trap penalty
Thousands of reviews with a mediocre average is the signature of a place that survives on foot traffic instead of food. That signature costs real ranking points.
Distance and hours
Closer beats farther, and not gently: within a 3 km radius the walk is most of the decision, so somewhere two minutes away has to be clearly beaten to lose. Open now is a filter you switch on yourself, off by default, because a town's best tables are often dinner only and hiding them at lunchtime would be hiding the answer. Hours are read against the restaurant's own timezone, so a list for another city is still right. A place whose hours we cannot find stays listed and ranks a touch lower.
What we refuse to do
We never pad the list. If an area only has seven places we'd stand behind, you get seven and we say so. We look at up to fifty places within 3 km and keep the ones whose adjusted rating clears 3.9, so a thin list means a thin area, not a shy algorithm. No stars on the surface, because words are honest and stars are anxiety. And no one can pay to be on the list.