I think they missed the point for some cities. Tourist cities have a lot of restaurant spending by people who *don't* live there.

This reminds me of a comparison of the wealth between kings of old verse the working American to the effect of that a king would have a staff of dozens of people to prepare a fairly small range of meals, while the American living in a modern city has thousands of people waiting on them to serve a staggering selection of meals from across the world, and which is far safer than anything the king would eat, besides.

Does this info graph figure in the differences in the costs of living in each area? I mean, you would spend more buying food in New York City than you would in other parts of the United States because of the lower costs. Also, does it figure in percent of income spent towards food other than the comment about Detroit in the article? More information on that would be very interesting to me.

I wonder how the household size varies by location. It seems like a per capita measurement would be a better comparison.

As the graphic notes, “five average Detroit households can eat on one Austinite’s food budget.”

The difference in the two figures, even allowing for cost of living, is staggering, and suggests that a great many Detroit folks are likely living with chronic food insecurity.

I live near Detroit, and when I have visitors from other states, one of the things they comment on, is that we have SO many restaurants here.

Now I must admit that as a single person with a good job, I'm more able to eat out than many people who support a family on an income similar to mine. And I do - I eat out more than I eat at home.

I travel a lot, for work and pleasure, and I've come to the conclusion that my friends who marvel at the restaurant scene here are not lying. When I go to Boston or northern Virginia, those areas simply don't have the sheer overwhelming number of restaurants I have at home. Also the restaurants seem more expensive, more crowded, and the food isn't as varied or as good. My friends who have moved from this area for other parts of the country report this as well. I have a friend who moved to San Francisco about ten years ago, and when he visits, he always wants to go out to eat, because, he says, even after all the years he's lived there, he has yet to find the restaurant choices out there that we have here.

So this data just seems weird to me. How can Detroit be at the bottom of this list, and yet we have so much more going for us in the restaurant scene?

Corporate franchise type restaurants are the same all over the USA. But so many parts of the country have *nothing* else. And in the cities that do have something else, it's all at the upmarket end. I can get breakfast at the locally owned coney, for about 2/3 the cost of that same breakfast at Bob Evans or Waffle House, and the food is better. How come Detroit has so many more good low-end non-franchise eateries, than other cities do? And how do we support this, with our low spending levels?

That's funny. My family and I often joke that no other place in the U.S. has food like Austin. Maybe there's something to that.

Since I live in Austin, I can't say I'm surprised to see that we spend the most amount of money on dining out. Most (middle-class) people I know--from college students to professionals--dine out at least once a day. I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who regularly cooks at home. A typical day's fare may include breakfast tacos, coffee from an independent coffee shop, lunch out with co-workers, and then dinner and drinks with friends and family. Frankly, I'm surprised Austinites spend so much on groceries.