Best Restaurants in Saudi Arabia 2026 — By Written Reviews

This is the biggest ranking Raddod has published: 849 restaurants across Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam, scored by a single, consistent method built on written Google reviews. The platform has analyzed 304,524 written reviews in total, and this page brings the three cities onto one scoreboard so you can see how the country's best dining rooms stack up against each other — not just against their neighbours.

Most "best restaurants in Saudi Arabia" lists are editor opinion. This one is not. Every place below earned its position from people who actually ate there and took the time to write about it. We rank by a Bayesian adjusted rating — explained in full further down — and we print the raw Google rating right next to it so you can see both numbers and judge for yourself.

Key Findings

849 restaurants qualified for ranking (10+ written reviews each) across three cities: Jeddah 298, Riyadh 426, Dammam 125.
The national Top 20 skews to Jeddah — 13 of 20 — with 5 from Riyadh and 2 from Dammam.
Across the Top 50 the pattern holds: 28 Jeddah, 18 Riyadh, 4 Dammam.
The ranked-average adjusted rating is highest in Jeddah (4.23), then Riyadh (4.16), then Dammam (4.08) — a real gap we explain honestly below.
The national number one is Shang Palace in Jeddah, with a Raddod rating of 4.83 from 250 written reviews.
A Dammam restaurant rated 4.5 earned it from a tougher crowd than a Jeddah one — the city's reviewers are measurably harder to please.

The Top 30 Restaurants in Saudi Arabia

Ranked by Raddod adjusted rating. The Written Reviews column is the number of written reviews that fed the score; Confidence reflects how much evidence sits behind it. Tap any name to open its full profile.

Rank	Restaurant	City	Raddod Rating	Google Rating	Tier	Written Reviews	Confidence
1	Shang Palace	Jeddah · #1 in city	4.83	4.8	S	250	High
2	Sbarro	Jeddah · #2 in city	4.82	4.6	S	264	High
3	طحينة	Jeddah · #3 in city	4.79	4.8	S	244	Limited
4	مطعم طبلية زمان	Dammam · #1 in city	4.78	4.8	S	258	Moderate
5	مطعم بورتوفيش للمأكولات البحرية ‏Portofish seafood	Jeddah · #4 in city	4.77	4.9	S	184	High
6	ابيكا العليا	Riyadh · #1 in city	4.77	4.9	S	224	High
7	Shajarat Al-durr Restaurant - Dammam Branch مطعم شجرة الدر - فرع الدمام	Dammam · #2 in city	4.77	4.9	S	258	Limited
8	Wildfire Brazilian Steakhouse وايلدفاير	Riyadh · #2 in city	4.77	4.8	S	260	Moderate
9	Botanica Restaurant	Riyadh · #3 in city	4.76	4.9	S	265	High
10	Ramesses restaurants	Jeddah · #5 in city	4.76	4	S	193	Moderate
11	Vapiano Red Sea Mall	Jeddah · #6 in city	4.76	4.3	S	197	Moderate
12	CHAN \| شان	Jeddah · #7 in city	4.75	4.7	S	259	Limited
13	Nozomi Riyadh	Riyadh · #4 in city	4.75	4.7	S	262	Moderate
14	masami sushi مسامي سوشي	Jeddah · #8 in city	4.75	4.6	S	196	High
15	TGI Friday's \| Al Andalus	Jeddah · #9 in city	4.75	4.4	S	263	Limited
16	La Calle	Jeddah · #10 in city	4.75	4.8	S	269	Moderate
17	Al Hamraa Barbecue Restaurant	Jeddah · #11 in city	4.74	4.5	S	228	Moderate
18	Niyyali	Jeddah · #12 in city	4.74	4.7	S	249	Moderate
19	Derati Restaurant	Riyadh · #5 in city	4.74	4.1	S	144	Moderate
20	Meatmoot \ميت موت لحوم مدخنة	Jeddah · #13 in city	4.74	4.6	S	229	Moderate
21	The Lucky Llama	Jeddah · #14 in city	4.73	4.6	S	243	High
22	Arcomi	Riyadh · #6 in city	4.73	4.6	S	256	Limited
23	Rokn el pasta	Jeddah · #15 in city	4.73	4.8	S	182	Moderate
24	Nando's Red Sea Mall	Jeddah · #16 in city	4.73	4.5	A+	235	Moderate
25	First Street Burgers	Riyadh · #7 in city	4.73	4.9	S	164	Limited
26	شركة قصر الرياض التجارية	Dammam · #3 in city	4.73	4.8	S	242	High
27	مطعم شوي دار للمشويات الطازجة	Riyadh · #8 in city	4.72	4.7	S	224	High
28	Maki House \| ماكي هاوس	Jeddah · #17 in city	4.72	4.7	A+	169	High
29	مطاعم مشويات الحمراء فرع الوزيرية	Riyadh · #9 in city	4.72	4.8	S	167	High
30	Wakame Malik - وكامي الملك	Jeddah · #18 in city	4.72	4.7	A+	212	Limited

How to Read This Table — Especially the City Badge

Here is the single most important thing on this page: read the city, not just the rank. The national list leans toward Jeddah — 13 of the Top 20 and 28 of the Top 50 are Jeddah restaurants. That is not an accident of our method, and it is not us putting a thumb on the scale. It is a genuine pattern in the data, and it deserves a straight explanation rather than a footnote.

The adjusted rating uses the same Bayesian prior for every restaurant in the country, so the comparison is methodologically consistent — a 4.70 in Riyadh is calculated exactly the way a 4.70 in Jeddah is. What the shared method does not do is pretend the cities are identical. Jeddah restaurants genuinely receive higher ratings on average than Dammam restaurants. Our ranked-average adjusted rating is 4.23 in Jeddah, 4.16 in Riyadh and 4.08 in Dammam.

And crucially, that gap is partly about the crowd, not only the kitchens. Our separate analysis of Dammam found it to be the toughest review crowd in the country: a city-wide average near 4.03 against Jeddah's 4.21. Dammam reviewers hand out fewer easy fives. So a Dammam restaurant sitting at 4.5 cleared a higher bar than a Jeddah restaurant at the same number — it won over a harder audience. We wrote that argument up in full: why Dammam is Saudi Arabia's toughest review crowd.

So when you compare two entries, the honest reading is: a Dammam or Riyadh restaurant a few places below a Jeddah one may well be the better night out for you, once you account for the crowd it had to please. The rank is the starting point. The city badge is the context.

How We Rank — The Method, in Plain Terms

Three ideas drive every number on this page: eligibility, the Bayesian adjusted rating, and confidence.

1. Eligibility. A restaurant needs at least 5 written reviews before we show a rating at all, and at least 10 before it can appear in a ranking. Star-only ratings with no text do not count — we only score reviews where someone actually wrote something. Every one of the 849 restaurants here cleared the 10-review bar.

2. The Bayesian adjusted rating — and why we don't just average. A simple average is easy to game and easy to mislead: a place with four glowing reviews would outrank a beloved institution with four hundred. So we use a Bayesian adjustment. Each restaurant's own average is blended with the average of its peer group (same city, same category), weighted by how many written reviews it has. A restaurant with hundreds of reviews sits close to its own average; one with just over ten is pulled toward the peer baseline until it earns its place. This is the number we rank by.

A deliberate note on honesty. We rank by the adjusted rating, but we also print the raw Google rating in its own column — and sometimes the two differ, as a few rows above show. We are not claiming our number is "more correct" than Google's; we are measuring a different thing. Our rating comes from written reviews only. Google's rating includes every star that was tapped, including the many left without a word. Across 1,845 businesses with 30 or more stored reviews, our written-review average runs about 0.13 stars below the Google rating on average — a median of 0.10 below. Roughly half sit below Google, about a fifth sit above, and a third land within a tenth of a star either way. The reason appears simple: a silent five-star tap costs nothing, while writing a review takes effort — and the people who make that effort are marginally more critical. This gap is small and near-uniform across all three cities, so it does not change any ranking on this page; it is exactly why we show both columns and ask you to read them together.

3. Confidence. The confidence label — High, Moderate or Limited — tells you how much evidence is behind a score. It rises with the number of written reviews and how well they cover the restaurant's total review count. A High-confidence 4.70 is a sturdier claim than a Limited-confidence 4.75. We would rather show you the uncertainty than hide it.

The full methodology, including tier boundaries and the exact formulas, lives on our methodology page.

Every Raddod Ranking

This page is the starting point. If you want a specific city or category, jump straight to the focused ranking:

Jeddah

Riyadh

Dammam

Mecca

Insights

One in Seven Saudi Reviews Names a Staff Member — and What That Really Tells You

Or browse the live rankings, updated daily, or the business directory to look up a specific place.

See Where Your City Stands

These rankings refresh every day as new written reviews come in — the live rankings always show the current picture. If you run a restaurant and want to see your own standing, your written-review profile, and how you compare inside your own city, you can set that up free at raddod.com. No editor's opinion — just what your customers actually wrote.