It’s been a great year for the restaurant business, filled with big ticket openings, international chefs looking to earn their stars in India and local chefs upping their game. Now, it’s time to pick the winners. And who better to do that than us? World over, Time Out is known for its objective food reviews and its prestigious eating and drinking awards. 

For the first edition of Time Out India’s food awards, presented by ICICI Bank, we divided the critics’ choice awards into local and national. The local prizes are restricted to five places – Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Goa – where we have trusted food critics whose integrity and experience we can vouch for. After visiting dozens of new cafés and restaurants in the last year, our in-house critics drew up shortlists of the best places – then revisited them to decide which one was worthy. All establishments were judged based on quality of food and ingredients – the most important aspect – but also on quality of service, ambience and value for money.

For the national awards, things were done a little differently. We nominated candidates from the same five places but the winners were ultimately decided by a panel of experts comprising food consultant Karen Anand, gourmand Javed Gaya and Time Out’s ever-hungry consulting editor Naresh Fernandes. And because you, our dear readers, are really who matter, we’ve also got a bag of Reader’s Choice Awards across seven cities, the winners of which were ratified by Ernst & Young after collating the thousands of votes we received on our website. All winners, as well as photos of the award ceremony at Taj Land’s End in Bandra, Mumbai, can be found on the website www.timeoutfoodawards.com.

So read on for our list of the year’s best tastemakers and palate rattlers. Happy eating!