Yelp is out with its 2025 list of the Top 100 Places to Eat in the United States, an annual crowd-sourced rating of popular everyday restaurants — and an ambitious Silicon Valley salad creator cracked the top 10.
Engineer-turned-entrepreneur Sanad Al Souz launched The Good Salad in Santa Clara in 2021 as a takeout/delivery concept and has since expanded to Palo Alto and Campbell. The restaurant ranked No. 8 on the list.
California restaurants scored 37 spots on the Top 100, more than twice last year’s number and far more than any other state. A seafood counter in Los Angeles, Holbox, ranked No. 1.
Besides The Good Salad, six other popular Bay Area restaurants made the grade:
No. 29: Mazra, of Redwood City, is a perennial honoree for its Mediterranean cuisine.
No. 40: Much Ado about Pizza serves up saucy pies in a Shakespearean-themed restaurant in Pleasanton.
No. 80: Daeho Kalbijjim & Beef Soup in San Mateo gets high praise for its Korean soups.
No. 92: San Francisco’s Rintaro is a Japanese izakaya with a focus on seasonal Californiai ingredients.
No. 93: Founder Desmond Tan’s Burma Superstar in San Francisco turned Bay Area diners on to Tea Leaf Salad and other Burmese dishes.
No. 99: A Half Moon Bay favorite since 1987, Pasta Moon wins kudos for its housemade pasta, particularly the Linguine with Dungeness Crab and Pappardelle Pancetta.
To create the Top 100, Yelp solicits nominations from reviewers on its website and sends that information through its data science team. Next, the company says, the list of candidate restaurants is narrowed down “with the expertise of our community managers and Trend Expert to curate a list as quirky, interesting and unique as the Yelp Community itself.”
This is a developing story. Come back for details on other California restaurants making the list.