Tom Tran
Updated: Oct 29, 2021
American cities with the best Asian food aka the most Asian restaurants
Have you ever wonder where Asian food might be most popular in America? Like where can we get dumplings as easily as getting a burger?
I obtained restaurant labels and calculated cuisine shares for each of the US cities with more than 200,000 residents (medium and large cities).
It’s not a surprise to see the overall result with nine out of ten being cities in California’s greater metropolitan areas of San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and San Diego. However, I did not expect to see Anchorage, Alaska in the list.
The top 10 American cities with highest estimated percentage of Asian restaurants in order are: Fremont, Riverside, Chula Vista, San Francisco, Anchorage, Bakersfield, Anaheim, San Jose, Oakland, and Long Beach.
If we only look at large cities with over 500,000 in population in major metropolitan areas, San Francisco ranks number one as the American city where Asian food is most popular, followed by San Jose, another Bay Area city. The only non-California city that breaks into the top three is Honolulu, Hawaii. California has a total of four places in the top ten with the other two being Los Angeles and San Diego.
Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon join the California cities on forming a majority by the West Coast. New York and Philadelphia are the only East coast cities to make it to the top ten alongside Houston. No Midwestern cities made this list.
So if you are looking for a city with the best Asian food, consider moving or visiting here.
Note: Asian cuisines considered here are East and Southeast Asian such as Chinese (and its regional components), Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino, etc. That does not include countries like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc., which are also in Asia or Hawaiian food, which is sometimes thought of as part of this group.
Note: These numbers are estimations since the classification of restaurants and counting them is not a straightforward task.