Some controversial cuts were going to be inevitable when the Chronicle's two main food critics set about reviving the Top 100 restaurants list this year. But, call me crazy, just-OK taco shops do not belong in the top 20 when over a dozen Michelin-starred spots are getting snubbed completely.

The top 50 of the Top 100 is now out, and yes, there are some surprises.

Maybe the problem was trying to do a ranked list, which actually feels less useful given that apples and oranges are being compared more often than not. And there's going to be a lot of "Wait, what did they rank higher than Benu?"

In the interest of transparency, critics MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez tried to explain their ranking methodology in a Q&A they published last week, but it honestly doesn't explain the arbitrariness of how they chose to rank the quality of the tacos at Oakland's Tacos Oscar (#11) — which are good, don't get me wrong, but maybe not even that stellar? — well ahead of all the Bay Area's one-, two-, and three-star restaurants according to Michelin, except two (#9 SingleThread, and #6 The Progress). It feels like they were trying to be deliberately contrarian about the Michelin pantheon, and also Michael Bauer's tastes, which is fine but also transparent in its contrariness.

"The Bay Area has a long history of culinary titans, many of which were propped up by Chronicle, but I hope this list helps create new ones," Hernandez says in the Q&A. Reading between the lines there, does that mean that the likes of Thomas Keller, Nancy Oakes, and Alice Waters were merely "propped up by the Chronicle"?

I'm not saying that the French Laundry, Boulevard, and Chez Panisse are still restaurants in their prime and keeping things fresh every night. But in creating a guide to the region's best restaurants, should all of them be ignored in favor of the new? Did these two critics even go to all three of these restaurants recently, given budgets and time constraints?

Most of the Michelin two-starred restaurants in the region were left off the list, including Saison, Birdsong, Lazy Bear, Acquerello, and Commis — and again, did they really make it to all of them to judge?

The critics also say in their intro, "There are other lists that will tell you which restaurants are the fanciest or the buzziest, but is that really how we eat?" And then they proceed to rank the two currently buzziest Bay Area restaurants, in terms of the national press, in the #1 and #2 spots: Burdell and Four Kings.

Yes, some of the wrongs of the Michelin inspectors are righted here, like vaulting Rich Table to the top 5 three years after the Michelin Guide callously decided the restaurant needed to lose a star, mid-pandemic. But other deserving restaurants that have been snubbed by Michelin remain snubbed by the Chronicle on this list, like Pearl 1601, SPQR, Ernest, Routier, Frances, and Octavia. All of those should have been in Top 100 contention, surely.

Sure, the list is always going to reflect the particular tastes of the critics themselves, but was the wisdom or fairness of making all these snubs in favor of a deli in Oakland (OK's Deli, #32), and a taco truck in Hayward (Tacos Mama Cuca, #23) really thoroughly debated? I'm sure both are good, but are they substantially better to be ranked higher than Flour + Water (#39) and Mister Jiu's (#66)?

Don't even get me started on the fact that La Taqueria made the cut but Taqueria Cancun did not.

The full list, thanks to a Redditor, is gridded out below. And the full, interactive list with capsule reviews is behind the Chronicle's paywall.