Mosto, TRB, and Element Fresh Top List of Nominations in 2016 Restaurant Awards

Voting is already underway in the Beijinger's 2016 Reader Restaurant Awards, and topping the nomination list this year are Beijing standbys Mosto (11 nominations), TRB (10 nominations) and Element Fresh (eight nominations).

Chinese restaurants with the most nominations include Da Dong Roast Duck with six nods, and Haidilao, and Jing Yaa Tang with five each.

But it's not just old standbys that have received multiple nods: several newcomers have had strong showings in this year's nominations, topped by The Georg and TRB Bites with four nominations each.

In fact, if you've already eaten your way through the classics and are eager for something new, look no further than our four different Best New Restaurant categories, which contain no less than 32 choices for you, all of which opened over the past 12 months.

Speaking of new, this year's 60 categories include several new categories and the return of several that were not on the list of categories last year.

Making a triumphant return to the Chinese side of the list are Best Boiled Dumplings, Best Cantonese, Best Provincial Government Restaurant, Best Xinjiang, and Best Hot Pot, as well as a newly cleft Best for Impressing Visitors category, which has been segmented into Chinese dining and non-Chinese dining.

We've also created a new category called Best New Location/Brand Extension to honor those restaurants who have expanded with impressive new locations or created spinoffs of their already popular establishments.

As is our custom, the nominations were chosen by a panel of 200 Beijing foodies, half selected by their knowledge of the scene and half drawn randomly from last year's voters. Panelists, none of which have a direct relationship with any venue, were given blank ballots, and their top eight (or so) selections in each category were listed on the official ballot.

Balloting is open for the remainder of the month; we suggest you don't vote right away but rather use this time to expand your knowledge of the scene by trying the venues you haven't been to.

And for those of you looking to vote more than once (you know who you are), we recommend not bothering as we have developed multiple methodologies to detect ever-present voting fraud. What methodologies are those? We're not revealing them, as the people that are most curious every year are those that love to vote for themselves multiple times and are thus looking for ways of circumventing our detection techniques. Suffice it to say that each year we discard more than 50 percent of the ballots cast.

We'll top it all off in early March with our Restaurant Awards where industry insiders will elect this year's members of the Beijing Dining Hall of Fame, open to people and venues that have operated in Beijing for at least seven years. Last year's class can be viewed here.

Images courtesy of the venues

The Beijinger 2016 Reader Restaurant Awards is made possible through our strategic partnerships with NUO Hotel Beijing and Anchor (by Fonterra). Raffle prize sponsor Sherpa's. Video sponsor McCain. Food and beverages are courtesy of CHEERS, China Wines & Spirits, Comptoirs de France, Home Plate Bar-B-Que, Jameson Irish Whiskey, Loft Eatalicious, Q Mex, and Vandergeeten.