Yahoo Finance 10 Best Places to Live for Foodies
Some of America's best culinary scenes are in cities you might not expect.
It wasn't always that way. American cuisine used to revolve around a few culinary hot spots, typically in major metro areas like New York City and Chicago. The biggest cities had far more variety, high-end fine dining and global options than smaller metros could offer.
The rise of foodie culture has leveled the playing field. Now you don't have to be on the Upper East Side to get a quality meal. From gastropubs to craft breweries to food trucks, America's smaller cities are taking food culture in intriguing directions, and many of the best places in the country for foodies are in areas that may once have been overlooked. According to U.S. News & World Report's evaluation of the top places for restaurants -- a factor in the Most Fun Places to Live ranking -- flourishing restaurant scenes can be found all over the country.
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To define the best places to live for foodies, we evaluated the accessibility of quality dining. To rank accessibility, we looked at the number of restaurants per 1,000 residents, and to rank quality, we used a combination of the average guest rating from TripAdvisor.com and the presence of Four and Five Diamond Award-winning restaurants (as assessed by the unbiased and widely respected AAA ratings agency). The 10 metro areas that came out on top had the best combination of all three factors.
Metro Area | Overall Restaurant Score | Restaurants Per 1,000 Residents | Average Guest Rating | No. AAA 4 & 5 Diamond Restaurants |
8.31 | 1.91 | 4.108 | 11 | |
8.30 | 2.15 | 4.135 | 4 | |
8.16 | 1.96 | 4.024 | 29 | |
8.14 | 2.06 | 4.108 | 6 | |
7.89 | 2.16 | 4.018 | 22 | |
7.88 | 3.26 | 4.048 | 5 | |
7.67 | 2.60 | 4.067 | 1 | |
7.63 | 1.67 | 4.011 | 22 | |
7.59 | 0.36 | 4.152 | 3 | |
7.54 | 2.51 | 4.055 | 2 |
Sources: TripAdvisor.com and AAA
San Diego, our Most Fun Place to Live in the United States, also took the crown as the best place in America for gastronomes. This Southern California metro area is especially known for its food truck scene. The famous MIHO Gastrotruck, for instance, offers a Mexican-Asian culinary hybrid that reflects the diverse population of the city itself. San Diego is, in fact, one of the best places in America for authentic Mexican food, and its residents enjoy plenty of dishes (like fish tacos) with a strong influence from south of the border. With good fine dining options, too -- the San Diego Reader's restaurant critic described the Addison Restaurant as "one of those peak experiences we'll remember all our lives" -- it's no surprise the city topped the list.
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A Northern California city, Santa Rosa, took the No. 2 spot. Santa Rosa has a big advantage in the culinary realm: It's the seat of Sonoma County, some of the best wine country in the world. Its restaurants are equally praise-worthy, and not only for the quality of the food. Worth Our Weight, for instance, is staffed by at-risk youths, and, like lots of other Santa Rosa establishments, its ingredients are sourced from local farms.
The list isn't all surprises. Las Vegas, in particular, has the most award-winning restaurants outside New York City, many of which are helmed by star chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Gordon Ramsey. In fact, the single most decadent dish in America is offered exclusively at Vegas' Fleur: the Fleur Burger 5000, a $5,000 meat concoction topped with foie gras and truffles. It's a far cry from a food truck, but a foodie couldn't do much better.
San Francisco and Los Angeles have excellent fine dining, too, plus lots of more affordable options that represent the two metro areas' ethnic diversity. Bon Appetit magazine, in fact, crowned San Francisco the best food city in the country in 2015. Los Angeles is perhaps best known for the variety of its street food, with authentic options of Mexican, Thai, Indian, Chinese and many other cultures' food that few American cities can beat in terms of the number of choices.
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However, a few of the metros on this list seem out of place until you learn more about their rising culinary scenes. The two Pennsylvania entries on this list, Pittsburgh and Lancaster, both have a large number of dining options relative to their sizes. Additionally, a Zagat survey ranked Pittsburgh as having had the best year for restaurants in 2015, thanks in part to innovative chefs moving in from larger cities. The Steel City has a noteworthy culinary history, too; Primanti Bros. and its signature fries and slaw-topped sandwiches have spread from Pittsburgh to franchises all over the east coast. Meanwhile Lancaster, surrounded by farmland, is better known for its farm-to-table options. New restaurants and bars in the city offer meals with fresh dairy and vegetables. This is also a great area for craft beer; the Lancaster Craft Beerfest features dozens of small breweries each year.
Portland, Maine, may also seem like a head-scratcher at first. But this coastal town is great for seafood lovers, thanks in large part to its lobster. As the No. 1 producer of lobster in the nation, Maine is a center of U.S. seafood, and Portland's food trucks, like Small Axe and Bite Into Maine, offer on-the-go Maine staples like lobster rolls. And like Pittsburgh, Portland has a great ratio of restaurants to consumers: Foodies in this small town are spoiled for choice.
Max Van Zile is an Editorial Intern at U.S. News. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or contact him at mvanzile@usnews.com.
