How we pick

Short version: a person who lives in Royal Oak decides, and we tell you what that judgment is based on.

The dining guide is not a ranking

The eat page is every restaurant on this site, A to Z. Rank lives in thebracket, voted on by people here.

We don't order the dining guide by Yelp stars. A 4.8 from 90 reviews and a 4.6 from 1,500 reviews are not comparable. Sorting by those is how you end up with a "best restaurants" list that omits half the landmarks in town.

Locals, then the editor

Every place has a page. People who live here can leave a review, and we show their average. If we've written the place up, the page gets an editor's take. If we haven't, it still has the local average and the bracket. We don't put a scarlet letter on a kitchen nobody on staff has walked into yet.

Address is on the page when we can confirm a street number from the restaurant's own site or a map listing. Hours stay off until a person confirms them. We don't paste Google's generated blurbs as an editor's take.

Categories first

The bracket starts as named matchups — best Thai, best pizza, best Italian — because asking people to pick between Beppe and Star of India was a bad question, and dumping both into “a night out” was the same question with a nicer label. Winner of each matchup takes that title. Those winners then play for the overall. When the nominated 32 still mixed jobs (sushi vs ramen, Cajun vs Indian), extra places came from what people actually search.

Dietary needs are guides, not bracket categories.Gluten-free anddairy-free lists stay empty until someone who ate there says the kitchen actually handles it. We will not run a “best gluten-free” tournament on menus we haven't checked.

What we will never do

• Sell a position in a ranked list. Ever.
• Quote a negative review as if it were praise.
• Claim an editor reviewed something no editor read.
• Publish a business we can't confirm is open.
• Present someone else's ratings as our own judgment.

Advertising

Sponsored placements are labeled "Sponsored," sit outside the ranked order, and userel="sponsored" links. Paying never moves a business up a list. If that ever changes, this page changes first.

Corrections

Wrong hours, closed business, something unfair? Tell us and we'll fix it and say what changed. Corrections are logged publicly with the date.