Dayton.com Best of Dayton 2019 winners

After more than a record-setting million votes were cast in our latest poll, the wonderful people of Dayton have spoken.

Here are the winners in more than 150 categories in Dayton.com’s Best of Dayton poll. The votes in this contest were cast in January.

This contest is truly your contest, Dayton. We asked for your help in choosing categories in the fall, we asked you to submit your nominations and then your top nominations formed the final ballot.

Thank you for participating in this year’s contest, and a huge congratulations to all of the winners and finalists! We can’t wait to see all of those window clings in your business windows very soon.

We hope you see some of your personal favorites on this list and that if you don’t, you still discover some new places to love in 2020.

The first-place, second-place and third-place winner of each individual contest are organized by topic. Click on the links below to read through the results in each broader category and individual contest.

THE BIG WINNERS

This year’s list of winners has some tried-and-true favorites and some new favorites as well.

Tank's Bar & Grill in Dayton had a remarkable eight first-place wins in this year's contest, after a strong performance last year. Tank's rolled over the competition once again in categories including Best Breakfast, Best Grilled Cheese, Best Chili, Best Bloody Mary, Best Dive Bar, Best Cheap Eats and Best Late-Night Eats. It also climbed from second to first place in one of the most popular contests, Best Burger.

Other big winners included:

Nick's Restaurant in Xenia: This was a big year for Nick's winning Friendliest Restaurant and taking home second or third place honors in seven additional dining categories.

Dayton Art Institute also was a repeat winner in several categories, including first-place wins for Art Gallery, Gala, Oktoberfest and Wedding Venue.

Marion's Piazza remained the king of Dayton pizza, winning Best Pizza Restaurant and Best Square-Cut Pizza and also won first-place in Best Restaurant to Take an Out-of-Towner and Best Restaurant to Take a Large Group.