is this new? the google restaurant band / leader

This seems like a new development.

If I google: pizza louisville

I get a dark gray band at the top of the results page with restaurant names, thumbnail images, review-stars summaries etc.

Anyone know the background on this? Is it from maps or G+?

Could be very useful to locate specific cuisines in unfamiliar locales.

I'm using firefox on a PC, if that matters.

I'm using IE 11 and see the same thing. I don't recall ever seeing it before so I'm assuming it's fairly new but I very rarely use Google to look for dining options. I wonder how they select the order that the restaurants appear in? It's not alphabetical and it's not by rating.

[Robin Garr]

I've noticed it too, over the past few days. Google seems to have been working so hard to integrate G+ lately that this would be my first guess, but I really don't know.

If I remember, Google is the one that bought Zagat, and part of the purpose was to integrate the two and make Google search continue to stand above the competition. This appears to be a part of that (starting shortly after the purchase, when you googled the name of a restaurant, the star-ratings from Zagat were shown in a box at the right of the screen, along with that day's hours, links to the phone number, and a ratings summary).

Seen it in other cities before they must be getting to Louisville now.

Hate to say it, but if your restaurant isn't buying into Google all the way you'll be in a serious disadvantage. I'm working with my sister's new Yoga studio to make sure everything is listed properly. You can do it all for free which is nice, just takes some time and expertise.