About

A few months ago I was traveling through Asia, trying to find good places to eat. I'd open Google Maps and Yelp, but every restaurant had nearly identical star ratings — impossible to tell what was actually worth going to.

I tried Instagram Reels and TikTok, spent way too long scrolling, and ended up with a handful of maybes. I even tried Xiaohongshu/Rednote and ran into the same problem.

Finding good food shouldn't be this tedious. So I built Locals.

I've been living in NYC for half a decade and realized the same problem exists here, and honestly, in every major city too. The ratings are hard to validate. The people doing the rating matter. So I scraped 48,000+ Google Maps reviews, figured out which reviewers actually live in NYC, and weighted the rankings accordingly. Local regulars count more. One-time visitors count less.

Hope you enjoy :)

- Harrison

How the score works

For those of you who are curious, here's how the ratings work.

60%

Geographic concentration

What share of their reviews are for NYC restaurants? Someone who's reviewed 200 spots worldwide but only 1 in NYC is probably a tourist.

25%

Review stability

Have they been reviewing NYC spots consistently over time, or just in one burst during a trip?

15%

Local Guide status

Google-verified Local Guides get a small boost.

Each restaurant's final ranking also factors in review text signals, location relative to tourist centers, and rating distribution. The list is updated periodically as new review data comes in.

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