Best of County Through the Years

Called “Editors’ Choice,” this guide was built entirely from our editorial staff’s picks. While this is a typical way to present ‘best ofs,’ it was a bit limiting. However, we did include a clever celebration of Hwy 101 with our list of the “Hot 101” places in Marin.

2015 was a big year for Best of the County — in large part because this was the first year where it was actually called Best of the County. Editors still picked the category winners, and each pick was individually numbered from one to 101, as well as by town, to shoutout the best businesses within each.

This year was a time of change yet again, where we honed in on top people, shops, restaurants, services, activities and gatherings. And instead of focusing on picks within each town, we pivoted to simply focusing on the picks themselves. Editors were the choosers for this go around.

We again integrated your votes with ours to keep things simple, with a golden poppy to indicate which picks were voted the best in our poll by our readers. Categories were also a bit looser this year, with fewer broad and specific ones than future years have.

In addition to readers’ choices, editors also shared their picks this year. We also included an extra special twist, where some winning businesses even shared quotes about the fan favorite that landed them on the list.  

We let our readers do the talking this year and opened up the ballots, with only one business picked per category. Of them all, dining and fitness + recreation reeled the most votes in. 

This was a hard year for Marin businesses as it was during the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic, so we decided to celebrate our past winners in a winner rewind. We also focused on giving recs to the businesses that were social distancing-friendly, like outdoor dining or Zoom fitness classes. 

This year we opened up voting to not just Marin, but the whole Bay Area! After Covid we wanted to celebrate businesses beyond just Marin, and readers responded with lots of votes. We even included Runners Up to the Bay Area places to capture as much of the bay as possible. And, we included a column for “Survival Stories” to highlight the amazing resilience of a few businesses through their 2020 pandemic experience. 

This was our second year of Bay Area-wide voting, and we got a record number of votes. Our polling system also featured nominated businesses in addition to the option for write-ins, which is the system we’ve since stuck with, more or less. 

2023 was a makeover year for Best of the County, marking the first where “Rest of the Best” (coined by then-Associate Publisher Leah Bronson), businesses were featured in addition to the “Readers’ Choice” ones. Voting was also kept to businesses at home, right here in Marin County.

While things will always be ever-changing, Best of the County was tightened up by 2024, a reflection of the evolution from the years prior. Formatting also became more refined this year.

We received over 21,000 votes this year, kicking off the 2025 Best of County season with a bang. A few new categories were also voted onto the ballot: Best Integrative/Alternative Medicine, Best Massage Therapist and Best Home Building Resources. And, businesses were given the chance to send photos of their own that we could use online.