Food Survey 2016: Pubs, cafes, dates & new places

Here’s the tl;dr, as the kids say – we’re doing this food and drink survey, where you lot tell us where you like to eat and drink, then we tally up all the votes and do a big fancy ‘food special’ with all the results in January. Go to the bottom of the page, fill in the form, then just have a seat – we’ll be with you in two to three months.

If that somewhat dispassionate explanation hasn’t won you over, we’ll get into a bit more detail on precisely what we’re looking for. The 2016 Food and Drink Survey features eight categories, so we’ll go half of them just now. First up, Best Pub. There are lots of pubs, and they’re all special in their own way, but we’re looking for your favourite no matter which one it is. Maybe it’s a swanky faux-speakeasy, or a grizzled old man’s pub. Maybe it’s the kind of place where you don’t get asked questions like ‘which is your favourite pub?’, in which case it sounds lovely and we’d like to know where it is please, thanks.

After the pubs, we move on to the hunt for Best Cafe. Coffee, cake and, if we’re being honest, probably some slightly natty interior design choices. We deliberately keep these categories quite broad to let you lot express yourselves, so don’t worry if you’re struggling to pick between a super-technical third wave coffee shop and a quaint Beatrix Potter-esque tea house – it’s supposed to be tricky. Sorry.

A potentially easier category to fill out is Best New Place. We all have our routines, and tend to flit between a small number of venues when we want a coffee, or a pint, or something nice to eat. Now, think back over the last year – did you suddenly start going somewhere you’d never seen or heard of before, but enjoy it so much that it’s now safely ensconced in the foodie rotation? That’s probably the place to vote for, then. As long as it opened this year, it’s fine by us.

Then there’s our final category for now, the hunt for the Best Date Place in your city. From restaurants that subtly suggest charming character quirks, to bars where awkward conversation doesn't need to be interspersed with admonishing headshakes for incompetent cocktail-makers, this one's pretty open to interpretation. You lot can head wherever you want on your 'dates', but be sure to tell us your favourite places to go so we can make a note of them all. That scans badly when reading it back, but not to worry – we are, as we established earlier, just doing some research.

The Skinny Food and Drink Survey closes on 28 November 2015; the results will be announced in January 2016