{"id":42991,"date":"2026-10-04T23:34:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T23:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/42991\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T23:34:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T23:34:28","slug":"does-new-york-city-have-the-worlds-best-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/42991\/","title":{"rendered":"Does New York City have the world’s best food?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, people have been arguing about food on the Internet again. In particular, they\u2019ve been arguing about whether the United States has better food than France. My answer is \u2014 well, maybe it does \u2014 but it obviously depends on where you live in the US and how you define the question.<\/p>\n

But forget France for a moment. Nothing against France, but I\u2019ve always been more of an Italy guy. In fact, I\u2019m writing this from vacation in Italy, where I\u2019ve been eating very well:<\/p>\n

\"\"Tagliatelle al rag\u00f9 at Trattoria Ermes in Modena, Italy<\/p>\n

This amazing plate of tagliatelle was part of a \u20ac22 menu completo that also included bread, water, coffee, a selection of local cold cuts, a tasty plate of zucchini, and a choice of several very good main courses (I picked a sausage dish). It would be hard to find something like this in New York, even though New York has very good Italian food \u2014 maybe you could get something 80 percent as good for 3x the price.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, every meal I\u2019ve had for the past week has been Italian food. That\u2019s Italy\u2019s comparative advantage, obviously. But we\u2019ve mostly been in small-ish towns where there aren\u2019t a lot of other choices. I\u2019ve had enough experience trying to eat \u201cinternational\u201d food in continental Europe to know that it\u2019s hit-and-miss depending on local tastes and migration patterns, even as compared to comparably-situated places in the United States.<\/p>\n

Obviously, though, that\u2019s espeically true when you compare Europe with New York, where I can walk 20 minutes in any direction from my apartment and encounter good-to-very-good versions of Thai food, Japanese food, Mexican food, or about a dozen other categories. I might also be able to get equal or better food from a different region of Italy in New York than I can in a medium-sized Italian town.<\/p>\n

Cross-national food comparisons are fraught enough, though, that perhaps it will help us to reroute by way of a a slightly less contentious question: Where can you find the best food in the US? Here are eight lists I found of America\u2019s best food cities:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Where do the rankings come from? The first three are from food writers \u2014 respectively, (A) Tom Sietsema of the Washington Post, (B) Daryl and Mindi Hirsch of 2foodtrippers and (C) Lauren Dana Ellman of Travel & Leisure. Sietsema and the Hirsches traveled to a whole bunch of American cities and ate a whole bunch of food, which seems like as good a way as any to answer this question. (I\u2019m less clear on how Ellman came up with her rankings.)<\/p>\n

Next, (E) and (F) are algorithmic methods; (E) is from US News & World Report and (F) is from WalletHub. The US News rankings are reasonable enough, whereas the WalletHub list is completely insane. (If you\u2019ve ranked Orlando \u2014 the city with the most fast food restaurants per capita \u2014 ahead of New York or Los Angeles, it\u2019s time to throw out your algorithm.) Finally, (G) and (H) are reader surveys, from Food & Wine and the travel magazine Fifty Grande, respectively. <\/p>\n

What about (D)? I\u2019m going to keep its identity secret for now.<\/p>\n

But basically, you can see a bifurcation in the rankings, with culinarily and ethnically diverse metro areas like New York in one group and medium-sized \u201cfoodie\u201d cities like New Orleans, Charleston and Portland in another group. You\u2019ll sometimes even get places as small as Asheville, North Carolina \u2014 the US\u2019s 131st-largest metro area \u2014 on \u201cbest food cities\u201d lists.<\/p>\n

It’s obvious that these are apples-to-oranges comparisons. So here\u2019s my attempt to develop a taxonomy of what people mean when they argue about the best food cities or the best food countries. I think they have roughly five different definitions in mind \u2014 which can yield very different answers.<\/p>\n

This is the category where New York shines. Dining out is sort of the default evening activity. And New York really does have an incredible density of food: shining examples of cuisines from every corner of the world. It\u2019s also extremely efficient in adopting to changing tastes and consumer demands. Categories that were relatively weak when I moved to New York in 2009 \u2014 like Mexican food, Japanese food and Korean food \u2014 have all quite conspicuously improved.<\/p>\n

Sorting your way through all the options in New York takes work, though, which is why it\u2019s a better food city to live in than to visit. The search space is almost impossibly large \u2014 it\u2019s hard enough to keep tabs on subcategories you care about (e.g. sushi in Manhattan) let the entire range of options throughout the Five Boroughs and beyond. <\/p>\n

And while the floor for food in New York is high, it\u2019s also not a city where you can just stumble in somewhere and necessarily be assured of a great meal. NYC isn\u2019t a particularly exclusive place \u2014 that\u2019s one of the things I love about it \u2014 but New Yorkers are extraordinarily efficient about finding the best spots and you\u2019ll limit your options if you aren\u2019t prepared to make some reservations or tolerate some long waits. <\/p>\n

Nor are first impressions always the best ones in New York. I think tourists sometimes fall into the trap of seeking out iconic New York foods like bagels and pizza \u2014 instead of drawing the broader lesson that New York has a comparative advantage in the Jewish-American and Italian-American culinary traditions, and furthermore in long having been one the world\u2019s foremost hubs for immigration.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now time to reveal where mystery list (D) came from. It\u2019s\u2026 simply a ranking of US metro areas sorted by their foreign-born population! It isn\u2019t a perfect ranking of the best food cities by any means. (I probably wouldn\u2019t have Boston in my personal top 10, for instance.) But it does a rather good job of replicating the other, more curated lists. <\/p>\n

Hey look, I like \u201cAmerican food\u201d as much as the next guy, whether you define that as burgers and hot dogs or barbecue or Southern regional cuisine. But I\u2019ve been persuaded by books like The United States of Arugala that Americans until perhaps a quarter-century ago favored expedience over food quality to an extent that was pretty outlier-ish relative to the rest of the world. Even now, Americans spend less time consuming food than citizens of peer countries do. The US has been playing catch-up \u2014 and we\u2019ve done that mostly by importing food culture from abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cBest food cities\u201d is often a euphuism for \u201cbest cities to dine out\u201d when these are obviously different questions. Food consumed at home still represents the large majority of American calorie intake \u2014 and quick-service restaurants (i.e. fast food) constitute the majority of restaurant meals. <\/p>\n

Places with a wide variety of high-quality, affordable produce \u2014 and high-quality, affordable quick-service options \u2014 therefore deserve a bump in the rankings by this definition. This doesn\u2019t necessarily make that much difference within the US, although it\u2019s probably enough to vault California (overwhelmingly the top state for agricultural exports) ahead of New York City.<\/p>\n

It matters more if you\u2019re comparing the US to places like France or Italy, however \u2014 as you can see in consumers\u2019 revealed preferences. France and especially Italy are substantial net exporters of foodstuffs, while the US is a net importer.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a romantic ideal of a perfect food-centric road trip. You\u2019ll go to a city for three or four days, with a restaurant list curated by locals who can get you in everywhere and introduce you to everyone. You\u2019ll visit food markets and have a couple of low-key but extremely high-quality lunches there. You\u2019ll stay out too late one night and have an amazingly good version of whatever umami-rich 2AM food that local nightcrawlers prefer. And maybe you\u2019ll even be treated to a meal or two prepared at home using fresh local produce.<\/p>\n

This sounds absolutely amazing \u2014 but it\u2019s also the sort of experience that\u2019s more reliably attainable if you\u2019re either i) a professional in the food industry or ii) a traveler who\u2019s experienced, well-off and\/or well-connected. And because people who write food best-of lists tend to fall into one of those buckets, their rankings are probably a little biased toward this idealized situation rather than what the average visitor might experience.<\/p>\n

With that said, it\u2019s certainly worth recognizing that the best food city for a 3-day weekend isn\u2019t the same as the one where you\u2019d want to live for 300 days a year. On a short trip, breadth, depth, and healthfulness matter less \u2014 and novelty (eating something you can\u2019t get a good version of at home) matters more. This definition helps cities and countries that specialize more and execute extremely well within particular culinary categories.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take these together. They are probably the most empirically addressable definitions: where is the average person eating the best on a daily basis?<\/p>\n

Within the US, I\u2019d imagine the \u201cright\u201d answer to both definitions is somewhere in California, especially somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has both a very high density of non-chain restaurants and access to lots of high-quality produce (and lots of people who can afford it).<\/p>\n

But between the mediocre quality of produce in the average American supermarket and our penchant for fast food, I have no doubt that the US comes up short on an international scale, compared not just to developed countries like France and Italy but also many developing countries. Again, this is not just my snooty opinion \u2014 you can see it in revealed consumer preferences. Italy exports two-thirds as much food as we do despite having an economy that\u2019s less than one-tenth the size.<\/p>\n

So which country has better food, the US or France?<\/p>\n

France clearly wins by Definitions 4 and 5.<\/p>\n

The US probably wins by Definition 1 \u2014 remember, this definition assumes high effort, i.e. really taking advantage of the extensive degree of consumer choice and the wide variety of international cuisines available in the US.<\/p>\n

France probably wins by definition 2, though it\u2019s close if you\u2019re a wealthy American living in a major city.<\/p>\n

Finally, Definition 3 is subjective enough as to be hard to resolve. As for my subjective opinion, I\u2019ve long found France in general and Paris in particular a little hard to approach foodwise as an outsider and that colors my answer. If you\u2019re comparing the US to Italy, though, my answer is Italy.<\/p>\n

So Definition 1 is the only clear American win. Nevertheless, it\u2019s not something I think should be taken for granted. In fact, I think of the incredibly rich array of restaurant dining experiences in New York \u2014 and also in other major American cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, and Washington \u2014 as being quite miraculous in a way that\u2019s easy to underrate when people argue about these things on the Internet.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because it requires two ingredients that make for somewhat uncomfortable political bedfellows. On the one hand, high tolerance for immigration and multiculturalism and high openness to experience that is sometimes lacking on the political right. You really don\u2019t want to be like this guy:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On the other hand, New York\u2019s restaurant scene reflects incredibly intensive, market-based competition \u2014 often paired with unapologetic \u201ccultural appropriation\u201d \u2014 of the sort that is sometimes out of favor on the left. Restaurant dining is a really tough business, but those restaurants that thrive do a remarkably good job of catering to every culinary desire and potentially create a lot of consumer and social surplus, bringing together people for great food under good and difficult circumstances alike. Whatever you think of neoliberalism, restaurant dining in major American cities, and increasingly even in its suburbs, is one of its most succulent fruits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, people have been arguing about food on the Internet again. In particular, they\u2019ve been arguing about whether the United States has better food than France. My answer is \u2014 well, maybe it does \u2014 but it obviously depends on where you live in the US and how you define the question. But forget France<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[290,301],"class_list":["post-42991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-cuisine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dc\/117385262775940417","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}