Ever wondered what major city has the most restaurants? How about what city has the most restaurants per capita.
We wanted to take a look at restaurant saturation around high population US and European cities. By pulling population data from Wikipedia and total number of restaurants in a given city from Yelp to compare where available, we found the number of people per restaurant in each location. You can see the results below:
| City | Population | Number of Restaurants | Number of People Per Restaurant |
| Washington D.C. | 693,000 | 6705 | 103.4 |
| Paris | 2,240,000 | 16911 | 132.5 |
| San Francisco | 884,000 | 4397 | 201.0 |
| Seattle | 724,000 | 3309 | 218.8 |
| Denver | 704,000 | 2903 | 242.5 |
| San Jose | 1,040,000 | 2933 | 354.6 |
| Philadelphia | 1,580,000 | 4283 | 368.9 |
| San Diego | 1,420,000 | 3474 | 408.8 |
| Austin | 950,000 | 2307 | 411.8 |
| Madrid | 3,180,000 | 7719 | 412.0 |
| Chicago | 2,720,000 | 5953 | 456.9 |
| New York | 8,620,000 | 18754 | 459.6 |
| Columbus | 879,000 | 1904 | 461.7 |
| Berlin | 3,710,000 | 7615 | 487.2 |
| Los Angeles | 4,000,000 | 8144 | 491.2 |
| Dallas | 1,340,000 | 2701 | 496.1 |
| Rome | 2,880,000 | 5367 | 536.6 |
| Charlotte | 859,000 | 1447 | 593.6 |
| Indianapolis | 863,000 | 1321 | 653.3 |
| San Antonio | 1,510,000 | 2275 | 663.7 |
| Fort Worth | 874,000 | 1307 | 668.7 |
| London | 8,830,000 | 13073 | 675.4 |
| Jacksonville | 892,000 | 1218 | 732.3 |
| Phoenix | 1,630,000 | 1889 | 862.9 |
| Houston | 2,310,000 | 2666 | 866.5 |
| Istanbul | 15,030,000 | 3395 | 4427.1 |
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A few things of note:
- Yelp data of total restaurant count as of September 2018. Some restaurants may have opened or closed in recent weeks.
- While tourism certainly increases overall restaurant density, cities like Berlin, Los Angeles, and London being in the middle-bottom of the list was interesting.
- Many of these cities that have high restaurant density are also serving a greater metro area population that might not directly live in the city (Washington D.C. being a prime example).
Population data sourced from Wikipedia – last counted in 2017.
Restaurant count sourced from Yelp.