By Josh Moss, editor, Louisville Magazine

Seventy-five years ago, the Chamber of Commerce founded Louisville Magazine, and in the inaugural issue, March 1950, a note from the chamber’s president described the “just and worthy cause” of “telling the story of Louisville as a living city by picture as well as by word” — of becoming “a show window of Louisville.”

In 1986, one way the magazine embraced that mission was by launching the Best of Louisville awards. (If you’re wondering: The Best VHS Rental Shop in ’86 was Video Madness, RIP.)

I still remember my first Best of Louisville editorial meeting, back in 2007. I was a staff writer then, just out of college, excited to explore my new hometown. But the collective-sigh energy around the conference table suggested that Best of Louisville was broken. 

With the annual awards, Readers’ Choice meant letting everyone vote, via a ballot inserted into the magazine and, eventually, in an online free-for-all as well. The results were too easy to manipulate (although it didn’t always take a handwriting expert to recognize the ballot stuffing) and too often usual-suspects predictable and not reflective of our entire city — of what makes Louisville Louisville. 

Readers named: Red Lobster the Best Seafood in 2001.

Outback the Best Steakhouse twice.

Target the Best Store four times.

Starbucks and the GAP and Bed Bath and Beyond have won Best of Louisville awards. 

So, intended as a sort of counterbalance, we also included Critic’s Choice, with individual writers and editors — ahem, “experts” (me included) — naming their favorites, without acknowledging blind spots. I became editor more than 10 years ago, and the last time we did Best of Louisville, in 2019, we eliminated outside voices and voting altogether, retreating to the we’ll-handle-this-ourselves extreme. That approach was personal-essay particular to the point of rendering Best of Louisville meaningless. That year, we actually gave an award to a barstool at Jack Fry’s. 

In 2020, it didn’t make sense to publish Best of Louisville when so much of our city was shuttered. We’ve been on a Best of Louisville break ever since. And working on a new approach. 

The second issue of Louisville Magazine in 1950 included an image of the chamber’s board of directors, ashtrays and all.

We began to wonder: What could a table of 30 people look like to reflect Louisville today? Or how about 30 tables of 30 people? Sixty tables? More?

That’s what we’ve been building, and we’re calling it the Best of Louisville Voting Academy — a citywide group of groups that represent the best in us, some 1,800 of us participating so far. We like to think of these groups based our locations, vocations and avocations. Neighbors in Russell, Middletown and Beechmont, principals and nonprofit leaders and restaurant workers, people who love our our parks, our live music venues, our arts groups….

Here’s how it works: I ask members of the voting academy questions about what they think represents the Best of Louisville. Sometimes, I’m looking for a celebratory Best of Louisville! with an exclamation point. But we also delve into the difficulties our city deals with, more of a question mark, as in: Is Louisville doing its best to get a bit better?

For Best of Louisville 2025, the 35th time we’ve published the awards, we specifically asked the voting academy to help us create categories, then for nominees, and also posed more open-ended questions too:

Where do you go when you need a break?

Where are you a regular, and what do you order there?

What’s something in Louisville you did for the first time last year that you’d recommend to others?

What’s something “touristy” you’d still recommend anyway?

What single place makes you feel most connected to Louisville?

This year, the voting academy determined 38 categories and 210 nominees. We narrowed down most categories to five or so finalists, though consensus led to more in some cases. For voting, each member received their own ballot — and, as always, could let me know if they disagreed. (A handful of folks shared their ballot link, but we only counted votes from members of the voting academy.) This year is the first nomination for about 40 percent of the finalists. We’ve missed a lot of the best of Louisville since ’86, and a lot in general since our founding in 1950.

Going forward, if you know somebody who’d have fun being a part of this, I’d love to hear from you:

josh@louisville.com

Best of Louisville is back, and, to quote from that first issue of Louisville Magazine one more time, all of this year’s nominees and winners, all of the members of the voting academy, have helped me “get the Louisville spirit — a spirit of pride in our hometown.”

And, like we wrote 75 years ago, “We must believe in our town.”