Grade Changes

We made our debut by rating General Hoock’s a well-deserved A. A few others joined atop the grade leader board, but each return visit to Hoock’s separated more and more from the rest of the pack. Now, it’s caused a bit of a restructuring of the system.

No restaurant we’ve visited is close to Hoock’s level, so that is the only A. Hilton Family Restaurant has slipped to an A-, joining Tully’s, Rohrbach and DiBella’s. HFR was originally our No. 1 restaurant, and received an A when we reviewed it last spring, but has since been surpassed for the top spot by Hoock's.

Before the revision there seemed to be a logjam of restaurants in the B+/B crowd, so we’ve spaced them out a bit more.

B+ restaurants are all very good places that have a few items that really stand out, and are pretty good all around.

B grades are typically places that don’t appear special from the outside, but are surprisingly good and turned our heads upon eating there.

B- grades are places that are either… a.) Good, but interchangeable with several others (usually family diners) or b.) Not quite there yet, but have potential to be great.

Few places have fallen into the C category, but the ones that have are usually way too generic. Frankly, we haven’t been to any places we absolutely wouldn’t return to, but we wouldn’t go out of our way to return to these places.

So, here are the revised grades:

A: General Hoock’s

A-: Hilton Family Restaurant, Tully’s, Rohrbach, DiBella’s

B+: Joe’s Brooklyn Pizza, Taste of Texas, Philly Steakout, Great Northern Pizza Kitchen, Abe’s, Martusciello Bread

B: Carmine’s Dakota Grill, Jo’s Diner, Krony’s Pizza, North Chili Family Restaurant, Brian’s USA Diner, Chilango’s Mexican, Olympia

B-: Anchor Bar, Hose 22, Slayton Place, Golden Eagle, Lighthouse Diner, Millhouse Family Restaurant, Arlington, Rookies, Main Street Pizza, BBQ Fred

C+: Nola’s, Redwood Inn, Tillman’s Village Inn (Wednesday BBQ Buffet)

C: Sullivan’s Charbroil

C-: Minnehan’s

These new grades will be used as precedents for future visits. As strange as it may sound, we look forward to the day we go to an all-around subpar restaurant to see if this new scale is accurate in the long run, but it seems to fit for now.