Lists

AQ, Nojo, and Bar Tartine Among Bauer’s New Additions to the Top 100

The 2012 update of the list comes out Sunday, April 1.
The 2012 update of the list comes out Sunday, April 1. Photo: Courtesy of the Chronicle

Skirting around the print-world strictures of yesteryear, which have previously kept the Chronicle’s Top 100 list embargoed from the internet for several days after publication, Michael Bauer goes ahead and reveals today on his blog the seventeen new restaurants that made the cut in his Bay Area-wide best-of. The new list comes out with Sunday’s paper, and we don’t yet know which restaurants had to be dropped in order to make room, but Bauer makes his usual preamble about all “sleepless nights” etc. as he tried to cull the final few of his special favorites. Below, this year’s winners, which aren’t all new restaurants as it turns out.

As we said before, we’re glad he got around to updating Bar Tartine via Nick Balla’s new menu, which has been in place nearly a year now, and the restaurant is among the new additions here. And he got around to Outerlands for the first time recently too, earning them a spot in the canon. AQ and Park Tavern were obvious additions here — both having been long-listed for James Beard Awards this year for Best New Restarurant (AQ made the short list). And we said Sons & Daughters should have been on there last year, but perhaps Bauer needed the validation of the Michelin folks first.

Tiny Noe Valley Sardinian restaurant La Ciccia gets a lucky spot on here this year, despite being six years old — Bauer recently returned for an update and was obviously pleased.

Surprisingly, despite what he described as deafening noise there, Bauer adds Lers Ros to the roster this time around. Along with Mateo’s Cocina Latina and Nojo, this represents a small effort to diversify a little, perhaps in response to criticism from Jonathan Kauffman last year about a dearth of ethnic restaurants on the Top 100.

Without further ado, here are the new additions:

AQ

Bar Tartine

Bar Terra (grouped in same entry as sister restaurant Terra)

Baumé (Palo Alto)

Claudine

El Paseo (Mill Valley)

La Ciccia

Lers Ros

Mateo’s Cocina Latina (Healdsburg)

Nojo

Outerlands

Park Tavern

Piccino

Press (St. Helena)

Ragazza (grouped in the same entry with sister pizzeria Gialina)

Sons & Daughters

State Bird Provisions


Here are the 15 restaurants added to the Top 100 list [Between Meals/Scoop]
Earlier: The Five Restaurants That Should Be in the 2011 Top 100, But Aren’t
Kauffman Weighs In on the Top 100, Notes How Very White It All Is
Spruce, Bix, Dining Room at the Ritz All Dropped from the Chron Top 100

AQ, Nojo, and Bar Tartine Among Bauer’s New Additions to the Top 100