How many restaurants are there in New York City?

How to get close to this number

Divide population by a catchment. The city has around eight and a half million residents, and the explanation gives roughly one restaurant per three hundred and fifteen people. Population divided by that ratio gives the answer, and the ratio itself is the more portable fact — it lets you estimate any city once you know its population.

Comparing it to the Spain question on this site is instructive: one establishment per one hundred and seventy-five people there against one per three hundred and fifteen here. A city famous for restaurants has roughly half the density of a country famous for bars, which shows how much dining culture varies even between wealthy places.

The turnover detail is the part that matters commercially: a large share close within five years, and rent rather than food cost is usually what ends them. A restaurant count is a snapshot of a population with very high churn, so the number stays roughly stable while the individual businesses composing it are almost entirely different every decade.