Eater Awards 2017: Montreal’s Readers’ Choice Votes by the Numbers

The winners of the 2017 Eater Awards were announced yesterday, and like last year, there were two winners in each category. Eater’s editorial team selected one winner for each category, and Eater readers had an opportunity to vote for a Readers’ Choice winner from among five nominees in each category.

For fairness, nominees were only informed of the voting immediately after each 24-hour poll opened — that means they were unable to plan elaborate campaigns to get out the vote (although the polls were widely shared on social media by the nominees). Some venues did take out sponsored advertisements on Facebook to garner more votes, although interestingly, it didn’t appear to lead to victory in most instances.

The full vote numbers can be seen below, but first, some notes on each category’s poll results:

• Peruvian-Japanese restaurant Tiradito cleaned up the Restaurant of the Year category, with a whopping 58 per cent of the vote: the biggest proportion out of any of the categories. (In a clean sweep, Tiradito was also the editor’s choice winner for that category; editor’s choice winners were chosen before poll results were known.)
• The Chef of the Year category drew more voters than any other, and Tiradito also took it out. But it was a tighter competition, with Liam Hopkins of NDG restaurant Hopkins also earning a chunk of votes.
• Tiradito’s successful run ended in the Design of the Year category, where hit Shaughnessy Village resto-bar Kampai Garden comfortably earned a win.
• The Affordable Restaurant of the Year category was somewhat of a blowout, with NDG sandwich-and-more slingers Porco earning a majority of the vote, perhaps indicating the presence of an anglophone voting bloc in NDG.
• Finally, Bar of the Year was the closest competition, with a three-horse race between tiki bar Snowbird, post-industrial hangout Riverside, and sake spot Gokudo, with Snowbird eking out the win.

And to satisfy the statisticians out there, here’s the exact breakdown of each poll.

• Montreal’s Eater Awards Winners 2017 [EMTL]