Meatballs
Italian cuisine remains America’s favorite. Beyond that, the new Zagat Survey revealed a few odd surprises.
Ramen, it seems, has reached the cultural tipping point – almost exactly the same percentage of Americans surveyed still “Love It” (26%) as are done and “Over It” (25%). Green juice, a flash in the pan that has not been in the limelight nearly as long as ramen, did worst among recently trendy foods, with more than three times as many folks ready to let it go as to keep it. The best performer? A humble condiment, sriracha, which has gone from Thai restaurants to diner tables alongside ketchup and thrives as a popular flavor of potato chip. It has been years since there was anything remotely “new” about this not-so-spicy hot sauce, yet it clings to its popularity, with a full third of respondents still loving it.
These are just some of the results released today by America’s most famous food poll, the long running Zagat Survey. Once limited to scoring restaurants (fairly arbitrarily), under new owner Google it has greatly expanded its culinary question asking. However, the information garnered is pretty narrow – there is nothing about the current popularity of recently hot cuisines (BBQ, tapas, rotisserie) or the next big thing (cauliflower seems to be everywhere all of a sudden). But it is still interesting.
Highlights?
More than five centuries after a series of Italian explorers sailed into the New World, Italian remains our nation’s favorite cuisine. Mangia!
Despite Saveur magazine recently imploring the public to stop using the word “foodie,” the overwhelming majority of Americans surveyed, 79%, consider themselves one (yet most of these conceded secretly hating the term). A mere 2% live in a state of ignorant bliss (of which I am admittedly a bit jealous) and answered with a question: “what’s a foodie?”
An impressive 40% of those polled feel it’s “completely unacceptable, unless it’s an emergency,” for fellow diners to use mobile phones at the table. But that still leaves nearly two thirds to ruin everyone else’s dinner.
I was a bit shocked to learn that 29% of people, when asked whether they’d ever pay for a hard-to-get reservation, replied “Yes, I’ve done it or I would.” Even more hard to fathom was the fact that Nashville led this category at 42%.
Remember when communal tables were hipster-hot and people bothered to dress well? When it came to dining deal-breakers, defined as something that would stop them from eating at a restaurant, communal tables was second, and jacket required third. Oddly, the top pet peeve was a cash-only policy, despite the fact that most of the cash-only eateries I have visited are the ones with lines out the door or impossible to get reservations (like Rao’s).
To me, the most interesting stuff revealed was geographic in nature, showing how we remain divided as a nation at meal times. The city whose residents most often eat lunch or dinner out was Los Angeles, followed by Austin, Miami, and a three way tie between New York, Honolulu, and San Antonio. I would have bet heavily on New York, given that people in all those other cities tend to actually have functional kitchens. The least frequent diners were in Boston, followed by Portland, OR, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. Living in New England, I might have guessed Bostonians reticence to go out might be tied to our region’s famous frugality, but it turns out that Boston eaters are the nation’s biggest tippers, at 20% versus a national average of 18.9%. The cities least likely to make servers smile? San Antonio (17.1%), followed by Orlando, Minneapolis and Nashville.
If the single biggest annoyance you face when dining out is bad service, you are not alone, as this topped the list of irritants and was number one complaint of 28% of respondents. However, if you live in Austin you really hate service (41%). Yet despite this, you eat out more than any city expect LA.
Not surprisingly New York was number one at something, with the highest dining tab of any U.S. city. The least expensive was Detroit. I recommend Buddy’s for real Detroit-style pizza.
The weirdest thing about the new survey results? Las Vegas, a city that once again broke its all-time tourism record last year, a city where people go specifically to eat, and a city that has the best fine dining scene in America, plus is home to just about every famous brand and chef, with an incredible wealth of restaurants of all types at all prices, was not mentioned once, in any category. Go figure.