What type of food does “American cuisine” bring to mind? Most likely you think of burgers, hot dogs, onion rings, chicken wings and all kinds of greasy foods. While those foods are popular across the country, in reality, each state has a favorite cuisine which isn’t always generic “American.”
Huffington Post’s associate infographics editor Alissa Scheller created a map of the US using data from Yelp to portray our disproportionately favorite cuisines by state. Huffington Post further explains:
“To get the data for the map, Yelp first calculated the percentage of total restaurants each cuisine represented in a given state. Then, it compared each percentage with the cuisine’s representation in restaurants nationwide. The resulting map, made by HuffPost, shows the cuisines with a disproportionate level of representation in each state.”
In the end, some results are predictable: Maine loves seafood, New Mexico prefers Mexican and Tex-Mex rules in Texas. But other results are more surprising. Who knew that Utah hungers for Hawaiian food or that Spanish and Portuguese cuisine are big in much of New England? Who knew that Virginia is the place to go for Peruvian food? Have a yearning for beef in bananas and tomato sauce? There’s more than a few Filipino restaurants in (of all places) Alaska.
Image: The Huffington Post, Source Yelp
I’m embarrassed to see Gastropubs listed for Idaho. And how could Steak possibly be disproportionately popular in Wyoming & Montana? It’s all they ever eat right? 😉