Bestrestaurants: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in Bestrestaurants and why it matters

The Bestrestaurants program is Cincinnati Magazine's public ballot for the Greater Cincinnati dining scene. The magazine describes it as an annual list that highlights the top places to eat, drink and experience across the area, which puts the people whose votes matter squarely in the local dining public: regulars of neighborhood spots, fans of the city's newer kitchens, and readers who already follow the magazine's restaurant reviews and dining news.

Cincinnati Magazine is both the organizer and the host. The ballot runs on the publication's own website rather than on an outside platform, and the voting address sits at https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/bestrestaurants/. That arrangement matters for supporters because the magazine itself is the brand the results feed: a place that does well here is positioned for the publication's Best Restaurants coverage, not for a generic awards badge.

For a restaurant, the program is a chance to be named by the publication whose dining coverage local diners already read. For a supporter, it is a short, direct action: open the magazine's page in the active window and name the places that deserve the recognition. The table below sets out the program's essentials.

The dated history of this ballot

The recurring shape of the program is well documented on the organizer's side. Cincinnati Magazine's own editors' letter states that the publication has produced a Best Restaurants issue every March since 2003, and the live page calls Best Restaurants an annual feature. The ballot's confirmed edition years are 2021, 2023 and 2024, with the magazine's dining coverage live around those cycles.

The confirmed window for the 2024 cycle sits in March, running across the month, and the evidence for that cycle describes it as a nominations phase. That phrasing is worth reading carefully: the March window is when supporters put names forward, and the magazine's dining coverage around the same period, including its Best New Restaurants features, carried dated items such as a March 13, 2024 piece on Nolia Kitchen. The feature and the ballot share the month.

The organizer's omissions are equally concrete. Cincinnati Magazine prints no day-level open and close dates, no vote cap, no per-supporter frequency rule and no eligibility text, and it has not announced the next edition year; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. No outside balloting promotion exists for this market either, so the magazine's page is the only round-date source. Treat the magazine's dining section each March as the reliable signal that a cycle is open.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot

Voting in Bestrestaurants is a direct interaction with the magazine's own site, which keeps the sequence short. The supporter opens the Best Restaurants address on cincinnatimagazine.com during the March window. Because the confirmed 2024 evidence describes the window as a nominations phase, the first action on the page is likely putting a favorite place's name forward rather than choosing from a fixed printed list. Whatever step is active on a given day, the live form shows it.

Once the form is open, the supporter follows its prompts and submits the restaurant names it asks for. No account requirement is published for this ballot, and no vote cap or return frequency is printed anywhere on the organizer's page, so the supporter should simply follow the instructions that sit beside the form during the active window. Should a given cycle add an email or confirmation step, that requirement shows up on the form itself.

After the window closes, the results flow into the magazine's dining coverage. The publication runs restaurant reviews, food news and drinking coverage year-round, and the Best Restaurants feature is the annual moment when readers' picks and the editors' coverage meet. A supporter who wants to see the outcome should watch the dining section in and after March rather than expecting a standalone results page outside the magazine's own site.

How this ballot sits beside its Ohio neighbours

Cincinnati is a crowded best-of market, and Bestrestaurants shares the Ohio calendar with several other public-vote programs a local diner might encounter. The closest neighbour in the same city is Best of Cincinnati, run by CityBeat rather than Cincinnati Magazine. The two publications are separate organizers, so their windows, categories and rules are entirely their own, and a pick made for one never transfers to the other.

What makes the magazine's dining ballot distinctive is the pairing of publisher and subject. Cincinnati Magazine is primarily a dining publication in this vertical: its site carries restaurant reviews, food news, drinking coverage and a wine guide, and the Best Restaurants feature is the annual centerpiece of that coverage. A restaurant named here sits inside a body of editorial work, not just a list.

Elsewhere in Ohio, the shape changes. 97.1 The Fan Pizza Madness Columbus is a radio-driven bracket, Akron Community's Choice Awards and CBUS Top Picks Community Choice Awards are city-wide community ballots, and Best of Ohio and the Best in Ohio Business Awards run at the state level. Bestrestaurants stays narrower by design: one publisher, one city's dining scene, one month.

Strengthening support in the March round

Support that actually moves this ballot is built around the nomination mechanic. Because the confirmed window is a nominations phase in March, the useful move for a restaurant or its fans is a coordinated early push: ask regulars, staff and newsletter followers to submit the same place by the exact name the magazine prints, in the first days of the window rather than the last. Early nominations also give the magazine's team a fuller picture of the field.

The organizer has printed no rules on outside help, paid voting packages or automation for this program, which cuts both ways: nothing official permits it, and nothing official forbids it in writing. The honest position is that a publication's readers' ballot is meant to reflect its audience, and coordinated genuine outreach from a restaurant's own community is the form of support no organizer questions. General background on strengthening support, including what organizers typically say about outside help, is on get more votes online.