I am the AJC restaurant critic and the food and dining section team lead.

When I first got a look at last year's list, I was actually still interviewing for the job.

And it was one of the first things that I did was ideate how I would change the list to make it more inclusive.

My mother had a restaurant here in Atlanta in Roswell, Georgia.

And under the methodology of the old list, her restaurant wouldn't have qualified for evaluation because she didn't have...

A beverage program.

So for me, it was very important to open up the list to as many types of restaurants as possible to truly reflect how Atlanta eats.

And that gives you an idea of of how to do the scoring.