How the ranking works

The idea

Asking people to score a dish out of ten doesn't work — everyone's scale is different. Asking “which of these two would you rather eat?” does. Each vote is a tiny match between two dishes, and thousands of those matches add up to a ranking.

Elo, in plain language

We use the Elo system, invented for chess. Every dish has a rating, and every new dish starts at 1500. Before each match we work out how likely each dish is to win, based on the gap between their ratings. A dish rated 1600 is expected to beat a 1500-rated dish about 64% of the time.

After the vote, the winner takes points from the loser. How many depends on how surprising the result was:

• If the 1600 favourite wins, it gains only 7 points — that was expected.
• If the 1500 underdog wins, it gains 13 points — an upset moves the table.

New and provisional dishes

New dishes move faster: their ratings change about twice as much per vote for their first 30 matches, so they find their level quickly. Until a dish has played 20 matches it carries a Provisional badge, because its rating is still settling.

Choosing the pairs

Most pairs are dishes with similar ratings — those votes tell us the most. Now and then we throw in a random pairing so that every dish meets a wide range of opponents. Dishes with fewer votes are shown more often.

Keeping it fair

Rankings only mean something if the votes are honest. Every pair is chosen by our server and can be voted on once, votes are speed-limited per visitor, and an invisible check keeps bots out. Every vote is kept, so if an attack ever slips through we can remove it and recalculate the ranking.

What counts as a region?

Dishes are tied to the place they come from: a country, and where it matters a region within it — Sicily rather than just Italy, Sichuan rather than just China. National dishes simply list the country.