The 101 best casual restaurants in America

To assemble our ranking, we took an approach similar to the one that we have used when compiling our 101 Best Restaurants in America. We compiled a list of America’s best purveyors of pizza, burgers, hot dogs, tacos, fried chicken, breakfast and brunch spots and more, ending up with more than 500 restaurants that we believe represent a vast cross-section of America and the casual restaurants that make it great. From there we assembled a survey, and sent it out to a panel of hundreds of America’s leading culinary authorities. We asked them to vote for their favorites, but only ones that they’d dined at within the past two years. In the end, we were left with a comprehensive ranking of the 101 Best Casual Restaurants in America. It’s a list we can fully stand behind, and also one that supplements our ranking of the 101 Best Restaurants in America — which admittedly focuses on restaurants that are out of many people’s price range — with a collection of restaurants that are affordable and accessible to all. (We didn’t consider large chains like Shake Shack, and we left off restaurants that made it into our earlier ranking of the 101 Best Restaurants in America, as well as Asian restaurants, which are so varied and expansive that they’re worthy of their own rankings.) So loosen your belt and get ready for a culinary tour of the best that America has to offer. Read on to learn which 101 casual restaurants are America’s best. (This story originally appeared on The Daily Meal.)