Bauer Adds AQ, Outerlands, Nojo and More to Top 100

The Bauer Lottery decides today is a good day to reveal the 15 restaurants he's adding to the 2012 Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants list, coming out in this Sunday's paper. In comparison to the whopping addition of 26 restaurants last year, the 2012 tally is modest. Still he's saying this is the year "California cuisine grew up." There are shoe-in newcomers: AQ, Bar Tartine, Nojo, Park Tavern, Sons & Daughters; wild card credibility builders like Outerlands and Claudine; and some others we know Bauer's held near-and-dear for a while, like Chron friend Mateo Granados of Mateo's in Healdsburg, and three-month-old State Bird Provisions from Nicole Krasinski and Staurt Brioza of Rubicon lineage. Bauer also adds some solid restaurants that have been around forever: Lers Ros and La Ciccia; out-of-SF reps Baume (Palo Alto), El Paseo (Mill Valley), Press (St. Helena) and—obviously—a pizza restaurant: Piccino. Then he admits to cheating a little by squeezing newcomer Ragazza in with it's sister restaurant Gialina, and Bar Terra with the attached Terra restaurant, which—fair.

Of course the big question now is: which 15 restaurants got dropped? Take a long hard look at last year's list and hedge your bets in the comments.

· Here are the 15 restaurants added to the Top 100 list [ISSF]
· All Top 100 Coverage [~ ESF ~]