Tucson Named One of the ‘Most Diverse Food Cities’ in the US

The Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts is where future chefs and bakers get serious about flavor, technique, and creativity. The school helps folks turn their passion into a profession — opening a restaurant, sharpening skills in the kitchen, etc.

The school also shares insights related to the food scene.

They recently released “America’s Most Diverse Food Cities,” and Tucson came in at #28. Phoenix also landed on the list, coming in at #31.

“In order to determine the diversity of these cities, we gathered data on the different types of national cuisines represented by restaurants in America’s 38 largest cities (that is, cities with a population greater than 500,000 as of the 2020 census).”

Then, they crunched some numbers, calculating the diversity of each city’s food scene relative to its population density and the “geographical density of its restaurants.”

More Neat Findings

The study also discovered there’s a steady rise in the demand for ethnic foods across the country.

The cost of living also impacts the diversity of a city’s food scene. Using numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts found out that in order to have a diverse food scene depends on the “ability of residents to pay for it.”

San Francisco is the nation’s most diverse food city. “Not only is its food scene more diverse than any other city, but that diversity is very dense, with a high level of diversity for a relatively small population.”

New York City, Seattle, DC, and Los Angeles round out the top five.

At the bottom of the list, Detroit is said to have the least amount of diversity in its food scene. Nearly two-thirds of its restaurants are classified as “American.”

Read all about it at escoffier.edu.