How we did it: The Sacramento Bee’s Top 50 Restaurants list

It’s a tough job, eating around the Sacramento region’s top restaurants to find the best of the best.

Okay, “tough” isn’t the right word. But it’s a job that takes lots of time, an adventurous spirit, a discerning palate and the financial backing to explore without favoritism.

My name is Benjy Egel, and I’ve been The Sacramento Bee’s food and drink writer since 2018. I recently wrote The Bee’s Top 50 Restaurants guide, published in print and online on Nov. 18.

Longtime readers might remember a similar guide published in 2021, which I wrote with former Bee dining critic Kate Washington. That was based on reviews from before the pandemic, which changed everything from dining room setups to ingredient sourcing for restaurants across the United States.

It was time for an updated list. So from December 2021 through June 2022, I reviewed roughly four Sacramento-area (Yolo, Sacramento, Placer and El Dorado counties) restaurants per week, tasting several dishes at each and tracking my observations in a private spreadsheet.

All surviving restaurants from the 2021 Top 50 list got another review, including the “readers choice” winners. I also checked out dozens of other restaurants that either opened recently or popped onto my radar, and added a few more reviews from this summer and fall to include the newest of the bunch.

The Bee paid for each meal, as it does for all my reviews, to avoid possible favoritism stemming from freebies. I made reservations under a friend’s name. Some chefs and managers recognized me from past interviews. When that became evident, I did my best to block out anything that might have been preferential treatment, often looking at surrounding tables to see how those customers’ meals went.

I wanted a Top 50 list that encapsulated the diversity of the Sacramento region’s dining scene. That meant cultural diversity, regional diversity and economic diversity. Expensive doesn’t always mean exceptional, of course.

I appreciated well-executed creativity, like when Canon chef Brad Cecchi whipped up a pull-apart cauliflower head with plum barbecue sauce and salty pickle chips that tasted incredible. But being different isn’t the same thing as being good: roast chicken topped with salmon roe at a restaurant that shall remain nameless, for example, was merely a reminder of why fish and poultry are normally served separately.

The Bee’s Top 50 restaurants are alphabetized, not ranked, because how can you compare a Michelin-starred fine dining concept to a kick-butt neighborhood taqueria? In determining who made the cut, I judged each restaurant on how good it was at what it was trying to be, less so against outside eateries with different price scales and business models.

Odds are, one of your favorite restaurants didn’t make this year’s list. Write it in as a “readers choice” candidate using this URL, and it might end up in the big list in the end. We’ll take the five highest vote-getters and update the Top 50 guide in mid-December.

Until then, thanks for caring about Sacramento’s food scene. It’s an exciting time to be eating.

This story was originally published November 18, 2022 at 5:00 AM.