The first thing many tourists notice when they come to New York is that there is a food establishment on almost every corner or block, especially the more popular streets. What always struck me was the variety of restaurants and cafes that New York has and that many were concentrated based on their neighborhood. Also, a select few had become such commonplace in New York, that you could spot them in multiple neighborhoods as often as you would a McDonald’s or a Starbucks.

We will split up into groups based on neighborhoods in the five boroughs. It could be as spontaneous as just divided by the street numbers or by areas such as SoHo, the Diamond District, Bay Ridge and so on. We will explore each street and the restaurants they house. Based on this data, we will figure out which is the most popular and common restaurant/cafe/diner to see in that specific neighborhood. We would be able to

design a map which divides the five boroughs not by street or neighborhood name, but by what kinds of food they have. An example is this map of Brooklyn:

What makes this project interesting is that the New York City Department of Health lists more than 20,000 restaurants on their “Restaurant Inspection Information” web site and I don’t think many of us would consider this to be the restaurant total. Also, considering how many people usually order take out since New York is such a bustling city, I think it would be informative to know about the options we have available rather than fall into a routine.

We would take pictures of the restaurants we liked the most and tally the restaurant into categories we make so that in the end we would be able to see how many of each restaurant we found.

If we then create maps of the boroughs split up by common food source, we would also see how this reflects the immigration to New York that we talked about in our family history and neighborhood visit presentations. Because we discussed how easy it is for immigrants to open businesses, especially similar to ones they have back home, it would be interesting to note how many of the restaurants and cafes are owned by immigrants. What kind of people go to these establishments? Is it a high end restaurant or one you go to everyday. Is the establishment based on delivery or take out or does it have a good feel to it that makes you want to stay in eat? There is a myriad of things we can discuss based on the data we collect and I hope that we can learn more about the immigration and development of New York based on its cuisine.