The Country's Best Cities for Food

Forty cities, tens (maybe hundreds) of thousand of restaurants. That's what Thrillist looked at in deciding their list of the Best U.S. Cities for Food.

The qualifications included metropolises of at least 500,000 people and starts with Fresno, Calif. at number 40. The top ten list, unsurprisingly, includes the nation's largest cities; places like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The number one is not huge in terms of population, but we can't argue with their pick: New Orleans.

Thrillist mentions Big Easy standbys like Commander's Palace and Antoine's, as well as delicious newbies like Peche and Square Root: "It would be an unmitigated task to start naming all of the tiny Creole, Cajun, Vietnamese, and Italian spots that fill in the huge gap between the new all-stars and the grand dames, but that’s why New Orleans visitors have created quite the cliche when they return from a visit: you could eat all day, all week in New Orleans and never get a bad meal or fully grasp the cuisine melting pot that fills the city."

See the full list here.