Stalking the Statistically Improbable Restaurant with Data

https://ethanzuckerman.com/2025/07/03/stalking-the-statistically-improbable-restaurant-with-data/

by nkurz • 1 year ago

84 38 1 year ago

giantfrog• 1 year ago

This is a really fun exercise; a rare example of something that's "data-centric" without being soulless.

I think it's fascinating how it illustrates weirdness about how Americans think about and categorize "ethnic" food. For example, the author's analysis of Google data shows Glendale, CA ranks #1 for "Highest prevalence of Mediterranean Restaurants." But I am nearly certain the majority of these, given Glendale's demographics, are in fact Armenian or Persian restaurants. Both Iran and Armenia are of course quite far from the Mediterranean region, but for whatever reason (rice? flat breads? grilled things on a stick?) have gotten lumped in with some Americanized, genericized conception of "the Mediterranean" that's indistinguishable from "the Middle East." I would imagine you'd find the same thing happening on Yelp etc.

yupitsme1233• 1 year ago

To me, this is less about how Americans incorrectly categorize food (not that they don't do that) and more about how lazy algorithms do so.

hnhg• 1 year ago

Plus lots of salad and olive oil. I believe the use of "Mediterranean" is to avoid strange expectations about Middle Eastern food, which many people seem to erroneously expect to be more like Indian.

gs17• 1 year ago

I always assumed it was due to a lot of Americans thinking "middle eastern" has a negative connotation.

lordnacho2• 1 year ago

some Americanized, genericized conception of "the Mediterranean" that's indistinguishable from "the Middle East."

The same happens with the food itself. I had a chat with a restaurateur in Switzerland, and he explained all the modifications he had to make in order to sell "Chinese" food. "They didn't have bean sprouts when I first came, and they will look like they are dying if there's any amount of spice in it."

The famous example of this is Chicken Tikka Masala, which is a British take on Indian food. You can't open an "Indian" restaurant in the UK and not put it on the menu, just as you must have the step-ladder of spice with Indian sounding names (Korma, Madras, Vindaloo). IIRC similar to General Tso's Chicken when it comes to ordering Chinese in the US, gotta be on the menu.

People simply come to expect certain things with certain foods, often disconnected with the the place that inspired it. When you open an ethnic restaurant, it's almost like joining a franchise. You aren't formally paying MacDonald's when you open a Chinese takeaway, but you do have to have things on the menu that people recognize, so the labels "Thai", "Ramen", "Japanese", etc function a bit like a franchise.

teddyh• 1 year ago

A bit like writing a fantasy novel. You aren’t paying any Tolkien Estate licensing fees, but people expect the established elves, trolls, dwarves, goblins, dragons, etc.

A more historical example of the same phenomenon may be commedia dell'arte.

ndsipa_pomu• 1 year ago

I'd say that the step-ladder of spiced Indian dishes are more associated with takeaways and cheaper restaurants. High quality Indian restaurants in the UK will tend to feature a specific region and only have a handful of dishes.

tchalla• 1 year ago

I recently spoke with someone who traveled to Thailand. She didn’t like the Pad Thai in Thailand and instead preferred the one in NYC with yellow color on the noodles.

yongjik• 1 year ago

BTW this happens all around the world. There are some staple dishes found at every Chinese restaurant in Korea, which are only tangentially related to Chinese food sold anywhere else.

kamma4434• 1 year ago

Like, there is no such thing called ‘Alfredo sauce’ in Italy - and it would not go on pasta anyway.

zem• 1 year ago

The famous example of this is Chicken Tikka Masala, which is a British take on Indian food.

as an indian i have to push back against this myth a bit - chicken tikka masala might have been invented in the UK, but it's a variant on similar indian dishes (butter chicken in particular) that not only would be right at home in many restaurants within india, but actually is! i don't even consider it fusion cuisine; it was invented by a south asian chef who happened to be living in the UK at the time, and the flavour profile is as "authentically" indian as any of the other standard punjabi-inspired north indian restaurant classics.

ChuckMcM• 1 year ago

Agreed, I am wondering if you could extract food truck data from the various licensing databases. That question arises because in some places food trucks have replaced the statistically improbable 'hole-in-the-wall' restaurant for some of the same reasons those restaurants existed, relatively low cost of entry.

freetinker• 1 year ago

People lack nuance. Nuanced views are computationally expensive.

yupitsme1233• 1 year ago

Apparently an American city of 100,000 people has:

9 Starbucks and 4 Dunkin’s 6 McDonalds, 3 Burger Kings and 3 Wendy’s 4 Taco Bells and 2 Chipotles 9 Subways 3 Dominos and 2.5 Chick-Fil-A’s

amarcheschi• 1 year ago

The Italian city where I live (~100k) has 4 McDonald's, no burger kings (there was one, it closed years ago) and that's quite it in terms of fast food.

Now that I think of it, there's a subway. It must be for tourists because I've never heard about any local eating there

lordnacho2• 1 year ago

How is this possible? There's about 25 restaurants that serve 100k people, so 4k people each? Can you really run a restaurant with a 4k catchment? What proportion of people are eating out each day?

yupitsme1233• 1 year ago

You're right. The numbers seem way too high. Nine Starbucks?? Not to mention that these are only the fast food spots. In total there are 300+ restaurants. I'm guessing that high density cities skewed the numbers way too high.

lwansbrough2• 1 year ago

There seems to be some correlation with how NIMBY a city is, and its access to diversified food options. (And probably entrepreneurship in general?)

Similarly, I would expect that the greater the dependence a city has on cars, the less diverse their food options are (leaning heavily into fast food.)

Houston standing out makes sense though. Despite its insane car infrastructure, I believe there are comparatively few restrictions on property use.

meepmorp• 1 year ago

There seems to be some correlation with how NIMBY a city is, and its access to diversified food options.

How are you measuring NIMBYness?

cyberax2• 1 year ago

Similarly, I would expect that the greater the dependence a city has on cars

I believe, this is simply if not reversed. A city with a good car infrastructure is far more likely to have niche restaurants, because people can easily _get_ there.

lwansbrough2• 1 year ago

Evidence? A city with good _pedestrian_ infrastructure has more people near restaurants without having to drive to begin with. See: New York.

djoldman• 1 year ago

Wow, what is Carrollton like?

Highest prevalence of Korean Restaurants:

Carrollton, Texas 14.67%

Federal Way, Washington 12.45%

Santa Clara, California 8.74%

Garden Grove, California 8.20%

Irvine, California 7.75%

Fullerton, California 7.46%

Ann Arbor, Michigan 5.14%

Honolulu, Hawaii 5.13%

Killeen, Texas 4.40%

Torrance, California 4.25%

rufus_foreman• 1 year ago

> what is Carrollton like

Carollton, Texas is like the deep south met H-1B jobs.

pixl972• 1 year ago

Carrollton has a number of what I call east Asian malls. All kinds of great Asian restaurants with food options from very Americanized to highly regional.

rawgabbit• 1 year ago

It is a suburb of Dallas. Carrollton has an Hmart and a big spa across the street.

There are a few Korean chaebols with offices in DFW. Samsung Electronics and Hyosung are the largest.

solidsnack9000• 1 year ago

Carrolton has a kind of KSuburbia. There is a bunch of Korean stuff spread over a huge area, mixed in with some Taiwanese, Japanese and Chinese places, with some big concentrations in shopping centers.

There are many interesting restaurants up there. There is a place that flies in live fish from Korea and has them swimming around in tanks and a place with some remarkable method of preparing plain white rice -- in special bowls -- that gives it a phenomenal quality and texture. There are also a lot of interesting desert and coffee places with things like specialty walnut-based sweet snacks, corn lattes, and green tea grown in Korea.

There are a lot of good, more standard KTown things like Korean BBQ and Paris Baguette, as well. One of Carrollton's Koreatowns is the old Japantown in this area (the Japantown has since dispersed and become JSuburbia -- a lot of it is to the north and east) and you can find a Daiso there as a sort of commemoration.

If you're used to the Koreatowns, Japantowns, or Chinatowns of LA, San Francisco or other large American cities, then the layout and expanse of the Carrolton situation is novel and surprising. There is always plenty of parking. The restaurants are huge and spacious and the grocery stores are gigantic. They are sometimes concentrated into shopping centers with enormous parking lots that let out onto three and four lane roads which bridge over or connect directly to the freeway. It's a very Texan experience in some ways.

SV_BubbleTime• 1 year ago

Some of the best Thai I’ve ever had outside of Thailand and Malaysia was in Allentown PA. Not sure that would get a hit since there are so many Thai places (by design).

dawnofdusk• 1 year ago

Now that Google Maps has the AI summary for restaurants, I wonder if this can be queried in the API? It would probably have the keywords for Xinjiang food or whatever the OP wants to analyze. Checking two Central Asian restaurants I've been to in my area, one is tagged "Restaurant" and one is tagged "Pan-Asian Restaurant", so not very illuminating. However, in their AI summaries both have keyword "Central Asian" and one even says more specifically "Kyrgyz"

jfengel• 1 year ago

We've got a remarkable number of West African restaurants in Laurel, MD. (Not East African, like they do in DC down the road.) I'm becoming quite the connoisseur of the differences between Ivoirien, Senegalese, Gambian, and several other types of Jollof.

The town is known for its African American and Central American populations, but there's clearly a large African immigrant population that I just don't otherwise see.

Stalking the Statistically Improbable Restaurant with Data

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