Seeing as I’ll be musing on the year’s best good eatin’ in this newsletter soon, now may be a good time to better explain my rating system that scales from S for the ✨best✨ dishes to A, B, C, and - for increasingly less stellar dishes.

The recipe source probably has the most significant impact on the rating. I steer clear of recipes making the rounds on Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok and instead only entertain recipes that have been thoroughly tested (think Milk Street, Bon Appétit, America’s Test Kitchen, etc.) or developed by chefs with technical, appreciable expertise (hence my adoration of cookbooks). This generally ensures that my time spent in the kitchen and money thrown at groceries don’t go to waste, not to mention that we frequently enjoy exceptional meals.

Of course, personal preference informs the ranking of a dish, too. That being said, I try to maintain a welcoming palate and evaluate a dish based on my technical execution rather than my own tastes. The goal is to steer away from any bias in favor of a more reliable, comprehensive rating.

How about an example of each? Let’s start with -, of which there are, fortunately, not very many! This low of a rating can partially be attributed to chef blunders, but I’ll say that the few dishes holding a - rating stemmed from unvetted recipes, AKA the ones I now whole-heartedly avoid like the plague. We haven’t had any - items in 2025, so I had to go all the way back to February 2024 to find my attempt at pita that garnered this rating. It was so bad, there is no photographic evidence of it. I now recognize this as a silly attempt considering the recipe only provided volumetric ingredients. When baking, and especially when messing with bread, measuring ingredients by weight is a must. This failure scarred me but at least cemented that valuable lesson.

C-rated dishes are similarly scarce, and I again had to go back to early 2024 to find an orange-cranberry loaf settled in at this rating. The recipe was fine, and the loaf turned out fine, but that’s all it was - fine. Though there’s again no photo, I can remember how mediocre this disappointing loaf tasted. It was just…boring. While all food deserves to be enjoyed, I expected more than this loaf could offer.

Despite it being a middle-of-the-pack rating, the B-team dishes could totally elicit starry-eyed S ratings from other folks. For that reason, I think a B rating is most representative of our eating preferences and perhaps less related to recipe quality. For example, a batch of shimla mirch sabzi, a green bell pepper curry, came to be just as the recipe foretold, but since we’re not huge fans of vegetal bell pepper bite, it wasn’t one of our favorites.

A-tier dishes make our world go ‘round. These are the trusty, stalwart recipes that elicit an, “Oh, I really like this - more than I thought I would!” These recipes both turn out according to plan and are right up our flavor alley. There are perhaps too many examples to choose from; some quick math tells me about 67% of my 2025 dishes have been designated A-tier. How about these tandoori tacos as an example? Peep the tomato salad topping…I told y’all I’ve come around! These were not life-changing but were good enough that seeing them now makes me want them again.

Have you ever had a meal that shifts something inside you, or have you enjoyed a sweet treat that changes the way you see the world? Around our table, those are the dishes that are bestowed an S ranking. If you see me within 48 hours of having eaten an S-tier meal, you’re going to hear about it, and it will consume my thoughts for even longer. These are the most craveable, exceptionally perfect meals. This crispy salt and pepper pork schnitzel with Chinese ranch represents this level of excellence. I would lick the plate clean if I were eating this alone. We’ve gotten a bit more stingy in applying this ranking as our standards have evolved, but they still bless us with their presence pretty regularly.

Seattle subscribers - be on the lookout for dinner invites in 2026 when we revisit some of our 2025 S-tier icons…