Most restauranted cities per capita

Due to my great love for all of you, boredom, and the desire to correct faulty studies and perceptions, I decided to chart the number of restaurants in the largest 55 metro areas in America, as well as some cities of local interest. I used population numbers from the 2010 Census, as reported on Wikipedia. For large populations, I rounded to the 100,000th place. For smaller populations, I rounded to the 10,000th place. I got the restaurant totals from a national restaurant website that does a decent job of tracking restaurants in cities. However, this website group is located in Seattle and has a strong presence in the Northwest, so cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Vancouver likely have a more accurate number of their restaurants listed than other cities, although I can vouch for the New Orleans number. The restaurant number also includes fast food and anywhere that sells prepared food if the food is cooked on the premises.

Here is the chart. The lower the number in the third column means the more restaurants per person.





Natchez, MS wins this contest with a restaurant for every 192 people. However, since there are only 20,000 residents, one could consider this too small a sample to compare with larger cities. Lafayette, LA, at 274 residents per restaurant does very well for mid-sized cities, beating out New Orleans 274 to 393. Baton Rouge? Not much positive can be said about the restaurant scene there, and this study furthers that perception. Of American metro areas with populations above 500,000, New Orleans places 12th out of 55 metro areas.

For large cities, Tampa is #1 with 321 people per restaurant. Not far behind are Orlando with 331, San Francisco-San Jose with 334, Hartford, CT with 336, and Seattle with 340.

Internationally, Vancouver would win the competition with 273 people per restaurant, but they're Canadian, and Canadians are not allowed to win.