About Top of Philly.

The same handful of marquee rooms with publicists get covered to exhaustion, while the neighborhood spots locals drive across town for on a Tuesday night stay buried under sponsored listings on the platforms most people search.

Every visitor gets steered to the corner of 9th and Passyunk and told that's Philadelphia food. It's not, and most of this city knows it. The real map runs through John's Roast Pork, the Italian Market's Mexican taquerias, Washington Avenue's pho spots, and the BYOBs stacked along East Passyunk with no liquor license and no need for one. Philadelphia eats by neighborhood, block by block, and the guides built for tourists don't track that. We built Top of Philly to rank the city the way people who live here actually decide where to eat.

We cover the sandwich trinity, cheesesteak, roast pork, hoagie, and the arguments locals have about all three. We cover South Philly's layered Italian, Mexican, and Vietnamese ground, the BYOB rows in Fishtown and East Passyunk, the tomato pie and red-gravy institutions, Reading Terminal and Chinatown, and the James Beard-level kitchens next to $9 market stalls. Center City, South Jersey's Collingswood, the Main Line: if Philadelphians actually eat there, it's on our radar. We track 0+ restaurants across the metro against the same methodology; the full method is laid out at How We Work.

Top of Philly is published by Top Rated Network LLC, an independent, veteran-owned Las Vegas media company that runs city dining guides on the same methodology across the country. The rankings and the writing are produced by this site’s own desk.

The site is small by design. No investors, no growth pressure, no quarterly board meeting that needs engagement numbers to keep climbing. The rankings answer to the data; the data answers to the city.

The methodology (Bayesian-weighted ratings, weekly recalculation) is the same one Top Rated Network uses across its other city guides. The editorial voice is local to Philadelphia. The sites themselves are built and maintained by WebIgniter, our in-house web studio.