“Note” they didn't include what we generally call ”food”, being American, bar or cafe. That's like most restauants. Considering ”food” in the Southwest is not only what in the Midwest is called ”meat and three”, or steak, burgers, fried chicken, roast chicken, American standards, etc., but more or less the same thing with tortillas and salsa picante, the unbroken region of ”Mexican” is not surprising. Nor is seafood in Maine and Louisiana. I wonder how much of the Hawaiian is poke (fast seafood) and loco moco (fast Hawaiian). Interesting the amount of ”pub” in the Northwest and one must wonder if it's really gastropub or fish and chips vs. standard American bar food but their places are called ”pubs” rather than ”bars”. The level of ”Italian” fits the stereotype of Italians in New York and New Jersey, and if one counted ”Mexican” as part of ”American” as in just food here, which it is, we'd probably be shown as Italian on that too. Or maybe Asian. By extension, Asian people are all along the West Coast, and immigrants often do well economically selling their cuisines, so without so many Mexican in PNW, inc. Alaska, Asian (all clumped together as if they were one—I wonder if they grouped Salvadoran, Brazilian, etc., with Mexican, though there's enough just food that's Mexican based in the parts that were originally part of Mexico that I'm sure they'd dominate anyway.)

The part that doesn't read demographically, or like ”just food” are the pizza and fast food regions in the East. Is that because they eat out less and go for something quick when they do? A lack of restaurant culture with better offerings? A restaurant culture so highly evolved that all the non-dominant cuisines didn't have enough individual numbers to outweigh junk on the run categories? A restaurant culture so dominated by ”American” (and cafe and bar) that that exclusion left fast American? I'm including pizza as American, because most of the segment is dominated by cheap delivery or walk up for a slice, which is another thing I'd call ”food” and American.

Jakkom, I love your posts and the articles you show us. This one made me think! But in the end, I think this map is sloppy reporting of junk statistics. Interesting, but lazy on their part.

must have a a very broad all-encompassing definition for 'pub'... because that is not indicative of where I am

We do have Detroit style pizza, and there seems to be a pizza joint everywhere, but it surprises me that it's the most popular when so much variety is available. We have the second most agriculturally diverse state (after California) and 22% of the workforce is employed in agriculture. I would have been less surprised if it had been Mexican, with the large number of migrant workers in our agriculture. Of course, they travel elsewhere in the winter, so maybe that affected it too. I don't even know what "pub" food is, really.

I'm also surprised that seafood isn't more popular along the west coast, and the southern coastal states, where it is readily available.

Annie

Our fisheries aren't what they were. Way overfished and polluted.

Seattle has good Lebanese restaurants, and Lebanon is part of Asia, as Dcarch noted.

I go to market in L.A. that calls itself Asian, and the food it sells is mostly Syrian, Lebanese, and Turkish, but it also has items from India.

When I think of Asian in the PNW, I think Thai, Chinese and Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Japanese (sushi), Indian and Korean. Those cuisines are ubiquitous here. The others on Darch's list are certainly found but the percentages of those to the ones I named are very, very low.
I was surprised by Alaska's being Asian.

Afghan food is one of my favorite Asian cuisines, but I've only had it in San Diego.

There are a lot of central and western Asian restaurants in Los Angeles, but the east Asian and SE Asian are more common, especially Japanese and Korean.

Chinese is most common in Monterey Park (plus Chinatown), Indian in Little India (Orange County), Vietnamese in Little Saigon (also Orange County), Armenian in Little Armenia, and Thai in Thaitown. There are several Japanese neighborhoods, including Little Tokyo and Sawtelle (AKA Litte Osaka) with large Japanese markets, and Koreatown is the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea, but there are lots of Korean restaurants in the South Bay as well.

In Culver City there are Burmese and Nepalese restaurants, not to mention Brazilian, Turkish, Egyptian, Indonesian, Mongolian, etc.

I almost never go to Mexican restaurants here (since I cook that at home), but I will go to a few Oaxacan and Yucatecan restaurants.

The closest restaurants to my house are Ethiopian, Persian, and Jamaican.

We haven't been eating out much during the pandemic, but I think maybe we should start again.

The selection of restaurants in Palm Springs/Coachella Valley is extremely limited, but there is a Belgian restaurant in Palm Springs that I like, and a few Greek ones.

Yeah, I was thinking East Asian, as Olychick said, but lumping all these cuisines together is as weird as excluding American food.

Lars, I love the Afghan place in San Diego, at least before they moved...

Based on their "survey", I can see that no one is interested in French cooking in the US.

Based on their survey, 1/3 of the country is into Mexican food. Yet here in NY, every time I wanted to take a client to a nice Mexican restaurant, I had a hard time finding one.

dcarch

Dcarch, what their badly compiled, rather meaningless numbers show is more about historical demographics than what people actually eat. Many years ago I ate at a good mom and pop Mexican restaurant in Louisville, and a really stupid pretending to be Mexican restaurant in Columbus. I assume there were no actual Mexicans involved with the latter.

Where can we find the definitions for those categories, and methodology used? I think a lot depends on that.

P.S. Wondering what that map would've looked 3 years ago?

Carol, it's in this article which is really about politics: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/29/chain-restaurant-capitals/ and based on this distribution of chain restaurants: https://friendlycities-gatech.github.io/chainness/

Good point about the methodology. Even worse than I'd guessed.

I live in Anchorage, Alaska and I wanted to respond (former data analyst here) but I am dumbstruck

Maybe tomorrow

Isn't Pub Food the same as Bar Food? Just asking.

The restaurants in my town in MI are mostly pizza or wings with burgers and chicken stuff. That's why we so rarely go out, we can make better of both at home. Since the ambiance in most of the places is not good, there's really no reason to go out. We even buy frozen pizza for the "in a pinch" times, better than what we can get locally. One Chinese restaurant takeout and it's too salty and not particularly good. Two Mexican restaurants, not good. All canned sauces and cheeses, nothing made on site. The rest is fast food, or chain diners like Bob Evans. A few nice places as far as ambiance but the food is variations on the same.

I'd love a nice Italian restaurant, or Thai place or good Chinese or even a place with seafood other than shrimp and salmon. Would not fly here. Even a nice sandwich shop/deli. We have a smoothie place with good wraps but they are too expensive for me to get, I make both just as good and a whole lot cheaper at home. Greek or other Mediterranean would be fab, there are some great ones in other places in our state due to large Arab population. Even in my home town with a large Arab population there are no restaurants or even delis with that kind of food. It's a boon for the Arab community because they do Middle Eastern dinners for a fundraiser all the time, so that's how we get to eat it!

I can't believe considering how popular pizza is in MI, that all of it in my home town is mediocre at best. When Little Caesars is the best pizza in town, you know you have issues. And there are seven pizza places to choose from. The pizza is almost all exactly the same, awful. If we ever do takeout, we get Little Caesars cheese pizza, very cheap, and then we add more of our own toppings to it. At least their crust isn't doughy.

I don't know about popular, but MI has great Italian, Mexican, Cuban, Jewish delis, and Middle Eastern restaurants generally due to immigration patterns. But the good ones are joints, not chains. Brew pubs also very popular. A lot of restaurants near the Great Lakes feature Lake fish, but that's becoming rarer and rarer, due to cost and availability I guess. We used to go to a lake place that had perch dinners every Friday night, very much a MI thing, but not as common anymore. A lot of mom and pop restaurants from my youth closed, and the pandemic was the nail in the coffin of many others. But the trend of narrowing of choices, corporate chains dominating, was going on at least a decade before the pandemic. Maybe someday it will reverse, but so much of the old guard is gone, not sure what will rise out of the ashes . . . there is a new restaurant going in to my home down in an old train warehouse. From the photos they are posting on FB the place looks like it has a ton of character. Not sure about the food. It was once a great place for Mexican.

I wouldn't be surprised of coastal trends of artisanal and fancy farm to table caught in there in a few years. Where there isn't great food, there's opportunity. I had to laugh about the Little Caesar's. :) In a TV interview many years ago, Gordon Ramsay said it was one of his favorites. I'm sure that was about the ability to get hot food into hungry children fast, but he said it. :)

The "farm to table" trend made a brief appearance in my rural area. At that time, I think there were too many actual farms and big home gardens around for that expensive concept to fly. The execution was poor, the prices ridiculous, we were not fooled. But there are quite a few places outside my home range with wonderful farm to table restaurants, particularly in orchards on the west coast, and some dairies with wonderful ice cream parlors, and even Turkeyville which is just up the road and in known for good foods overall, not just turkey, but I have yet to try it out. They even have a dinner theater.

There are now two brew pubs recently opened in my home town. One brews off-site and takes the beer to a small chain of local spots, and the other features a revolving "on tap" selection of regional brews. They are also advertising pizza, so at some point we will have to try it out and see if they manage to buck the awful local pizza trend. Just opened and I'm not sure if they do takeout which is all we really do right now. The other place features wild game and pasture raised meats . . . and we have a local barbecue place opening up supposedly featuring local raised meats . . . we'll see if any of these spots last . . .

We had an authentic Venezuelan arepas deli and coffee shop, it did not last which was a real shame. I met the owner, a former lawyer and refugee from Venezuela. He and his mom ran the shop. Very sad that they couldn't make it. His wife worked as a meat inspector at our local pork processing plant. So sad that he had to give up his law career to come to the US. But he still thought it was well worth it and life was better without the political violence. We have not appreciated our blessings of civil society here in the US for so long, we had better wake up or we will lose them!