re: Most restauranted cities per capita

Expecting a reply from the New Orleans city limits only crowd, here are the numbers for New Orleans city limits only.

Population (2010): 344,000
Total restaurants: 1210
Non-fast food/chain restaurants (Fitzmorris number): 535
Within city limits, people per restaurant (chains included): 284
Within city limits, people per restaurant (chains not included): 643

Two conclusions:

1) The chain restaurant to local restaurant ratio of the entire New Orleans Metro area is actually lower outside Orleans Parish city limits!

2) The local restaurant market in New Orleans, at 643 people per local restaurant, is unsaturated, based on national numbers, and is probably the reason we have seen an explosion of restaurants post-Katrina and continue to see new restaurants open. The popular opinion that we are at or close to saturation point is based on faulty logic, built on the idea that pre-Katrina NOLA had a high number of local restaurants per person.