The 45 Best Restaurants In America

The restaurant industry is notoriously cut-throat: According to the National Restaurant Association, 30% of restaurants fail in the first year they open, and of those that survive, another 30% close in the next two.

To stand out in an increasingly bloated market, restaurants need to wow diners with incredible meals, outstanding service, and great ambiance - especially if they're charging upwards of $100 a person for the experience.

With dozens of best-restaurant lists and user-generated reviews crowding the internet, the definitive winner can get lost in the shuffle. We looked at five notable restaurant rankings compiled by food critics, diners, and experts, and combined these rankings to come up with the ultimate list of the Best Restaurants in America.

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The rankings we used were The Daily Meal's 101 Best Restaurants in America; OpenTable's 2013 Diners' Choice Top 100 Best Restaurants in America; The World's 100 Best Restaurants; the James Beard Foundation's 2014 Restaurant and Chef Award Semifinalists; and Zagat's 20 Top-Rated Restaurants Across America.

We gave each restaurant a numerical rating based on how many lists the restaurant appeared on and how high it appeared on lists that were ranked. Restaurants that appeared on multiple lists ranked higher on our list, while restaurants that ranked on only one of these lists ended up closer to the bottom. You can read our complete methodology and see numerical scores here.