Mapping Gastronomic Borders in the US

A few months ago, Jennifer Lee showed me what happens when you map Google searches for tacos versus Chinese food in the US.

This led to a lengthy “wait but why” debate, specifically if the divide was a vestige of the eastern border of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Taking this idea one step further, we began asking: what is the taco capital of the US? What is the exact longitude where Chinese food eclipses tacos? What about regional preferences, such as the South‘s affinity for BBQ?

We reached out to Google for answers, and they provided an anonymized dataset based on actual restaurant visits (their full write-up on the data+project is here).

The first thing to map was the popularity of individual cuisines around the US. For example, here’s pizza.

Pizza must have more competition as you move south and west (i.e., better BBQ and Mexican options).

So let’s take a closer look at BBQ. I’ve always been facinated by the tree line of BBQ: as one moves north, at what latitude does BBQ consumption plummet? The answer: roughly between the 36th parallel north and 37th.

BBQ purveyors, bring your craft north! Here are 5 other cuisines to browse:

Next, we’ll limit the geographies to just metropolitan areas. Basically, let’s crown the city with the highest share of pizzeria visits (as percent of their total visits to restaurants).

Seattle, #1 in coffee, surprises no one. Same with NOLA for seafood.

But as a Michigander, I was delighted to see Detroit take #1 for pizza. Detroit-style pizza is a thing, and perhaps it’s competing against fewer cuisine varieties in the city.

I was hoping to see Philly take #1 for sandwiches, but that honor goes to Orlando (with Tampa taking silver). Florida must love their sandwiches/hoagies/subs/heroes (ps. someone please map the regional slang for sandwiches).

Lastly, we wanted a way to compare cuisines head-to-head. We weren’t able to create the tacos vs. chinese food matchup from earlier in the article, but there are 11 restaurant types to choose from in the drop-down menus below.

We’d love to hear your theories on why certain geographies over-index on their restaurant preferences. Email me with your ideas at matt@pudding.cool and if it checks out, we’ll add it to the article.