Food is subjective and highly susceptible to personal tastes. Some people like certain cuisines, while others dislike them. But the Going Global community travels a lot and we get a tremendous amount of feedback saying that culinary experiences are a big motivator, so we thought we’d try to figure out the cities with the best food.
This isn’t easy as there’s no real way to subjectively rate a city’s culinary scene, however there is a way to determine its success or at least it’s scope. One measure, which we have been tracking over the years, is the number of restaurants a city can support. And by this metric, Asian cities win.
The latest research we can find shows that Tokyo and Seoul dominate the next closest city, which is the City of Lights Paris. These figures are for sit in or take out restaurants in permanent, legal locations, so they don’t include food stalls, street eats, food trucks or other more mobile or non-permanent places.
Number of Restaurants
- Tokyo: 148,582
- Seoul: 83,239
- Paris: 44,896
- Bogota: 34,248
- Los Angeles: 29,560
- New York City: 26,697
- London: 18,110
- Hong Kong: 13,743
- Rome: 13,721
- Milan: 8,785
- Taipei: 8,253
- Toronto: 7,984
This list is designed top give you food for thought when you travel, as it lays out which cities are obsessed with food. Of course, it also shows cities where the culture is to eat out and ones where apartments and kitchens tend to be quite small or limited. Still you probably can’t go too far wrong at a restaurant in any of these top tier foodie cities.
The best cities for food it would seem are the most competitive ones, where there’s lots of choices and therefore to survive, all restaurants have to up their game.
