Study: Out of 960 Chipotles, the most praised one in America is in a former Seattle Taco Time

The best Chipotle in America sits inside one of Seattle’s strangest buildings, according to a new study.

The Chipotle at 2212 N. 45th Street in Wallingford earned more praise in its Google reviews than any of the roughly 960 Chipotle locations analyzed nationwide. If the address sounds familiar, the building should too. It’s the mirrored glass cube that housed the neighborhood’s beloved Taco Time for 34 years.

There’s one catch. Pull the restaurant up on Google, and you’ll find a 3.7-star rating.

Wallingford Chipotle tops 960 locations in Google review study

The study comes from Solitaire Streak, a website where you can play solitaire online. If you can’t trust an online solitaire site to rank fast-food restaurants, who can you trust?

Researchers combed through more than 22 million Google reviews at about 27,000 fast-food restaurants to find the most praised location for each of 43 national chains. The study counted the 4- and 5-star reviews that praised a restaurant’s speed, accuracy, staff, or food, then compared that number to each location’s total reviews.

The Wallingford Chipotle scored 25.6%, edging out a Chipotle in Houston at 24.2%.

Seattle as a whole ranked 10th in the nation for friendly fast-food staff, with nearly 30% of positive reviews praising employees, but 94th for food quality. Jimmy John’s was the city’s most-praised chain.

How America’s best Chipotle ended up with 3.7 stars

The ranking and the star rating measure different things. The study looked at how often reviews offered specific praise, not at the average score.

When the data was pulled, the Wallingford Chipotle had 125 Google reviews and a 3.8-star rating. Sixty of those reviews gave 4 or 5 stars, and 32 of them praised something specific. Divide 32 by 125, and you get 25.6%.

Thirty of those 32 reviews praised the staff. Thirteen mentioned the food.

The small sample helped. The typical Chipotle in the study had about 720 reviews, and 95% of them had more than the Wallingford store, which opened in early 2025. A handful of happy customers moves the needle a lot more at a newer restaurant.

And 3.7 stars is actually above average for this chain. The Chipotles in the study averaged about 3.5 stars, and Chipotle as a brand ranked 39th of the 43 chains, ahead of only Burger King, KFC, Jack in the Box, and McDonald’s.

Wallingford’s Taco Time glass cube, from landmark to eyesore to Chipotle

A Taco Time opened at the corner of 45th and Corliss in 1978 and was rebuilt in 1990 as the mirrored glass box that drivers on 45th either loved or loved to mock.

When it closed on July 15, 2024, after nearly 50 years in the neighborhood, Wallingford took it hard. Neighbors mourned on Facebook, local bloggers wrote farewells, and Cascade PBS ran a story on why Seattle lost its mind over the closure.

Then the empty building sat, and neighborhood blog Wallyhood reported it was soon covered in graffiti, with trash piling up in the parking lot. Chipotle cleaned up the cube, resurfaced the lot, added a drive-thru pickup lane onto 45th, and kept the glass. Now the customers who leave reviews love the place more than any other Chipotle in America.

Best Chipotle in America? From a certain point of view, as Obi-Wan Kenobi would say. That point of view belongs to 32 Google reviewers and a solitaire website.

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