Edited by Cynthia Glover and David Dudley   Photography by Joseph Sachs

Dining is a distinctly human enterprise. No other species, after all, cooks its food or surrounds it with layers of ritual and meaning the way we do. Gleaming silverware and a beautifully arranged wine list mean nothing to raccoons, for instance, who might wash their food but then gulp it down with little additional fanfare. Humans are the ones who prefer a touch of spectacle and the joy of interaction with others of the species. We want to dine, in other words, rather than simply to eat.

And so it is the human factor, not just the food factor, that we celebrate in our favorite restaurants this year. A maître d’s warm welcome or the smile of the hatcheck attendant can be as integral to the restaurant experience as the perfectly seared foie gras or the delicately sauced greenlip mussels.

This year’s intrepid team of reporters included food and wine editor Cynthia Glover, David Dudley, Linda DeLibero, Margaret Guroff, Georgia Hurff, Tory Merkel, Catherine Pierre, and Max Weiss. We ate, we deliberated, we agonized, but mostly we enjoyed our annual dining blitzkrieg. We were, once again, impressed by the growing quality of area restaurants and the increasingly interesting choices we have for dining happily—and humanly—in Baltimore.