Are Ethnic Restaurants in Ethnic Neighborhoods? (Part 2)
This post is a follow up to my earlier post where I posed the question: can the number of ethnic restaurants in an ethnic neighborhood be a measure of how “ethnic” a place is? In other words, if there are more people of a certain group in a neighborhood, will there be more restaurants of that group in that area?
In this post, I’ll present some initial findings about this question using Yelp data. I’ll also show census data for the Ghanaian people. To test my hypothesis, I searched and counted the number of public eateries for three groups in New York City: the Uyghurs, the Garifuna and the Ghanaian people. I found that the groups are not equally represented in NYC: The Uyghurs have the smallest number of people of the three groups but have the most eateries at 14, the Garifuna, the largest group have only 2 eateries while Ghanaians have 10 eateries. It seems that the absolute number of eateries representing an ethnic group is not a good representation of their presence in a city. The reasons for this will be discussed later. The data is useful in other ways, however. The locations of the restaurants could perhaps be representative of where a group lives*, the number of eateries can be combined with other visible markers to truly see a groups presence, and the proportion of eateries to people can be indicative of assimilation and political climate, among other things.
Uyghurs
Inhabitants to Eateries ratio (estimate): 17.9:1 (250:14)
There are hundreds of Uyghurs in NYC, yet there are 14 separate eateries for them in NYC. They are spread out among four different clusters and include food trucks and chain restaurants, which none of the other groups mentioned here also have. This situation is probably more indicative of neighboring groups to Uyghurs and Americans general interest in Uyghur food than about the Uyghurs living in NYC. For one, we can see that there are 3 locations in Flushing, a heavily Asian area of NYC that may mean other groups are the primary customers, not Uyghurs. Second, the food trucks are very similar to other food (mainly “halal”**) food trucks in NYC, only differentiating themselves by their unique take on the genre, so to speak. Although I don’t have a good idea of where and how many Uyghurs live in NYC, this seems to be a case where the number and locations of the restaurants say more about the (out-group) customers than the (in-group) owners.
Garifuna
Inhabitants to Eateries ratio (estimate): 75000:1 (150000:2)
The Garifuna seem to be the largest of the three groups yet only have two eateries. I hypothesize a few reasons for this: one, the average American has probably no idea of who the Garifuna are, let alone that it refers to a group of people. A major reason for this is that they do not comprise a single political entity: the Garifuna are spread across Belize, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Thus, they are less recognized than people who identify as “Belizean”, “Honduran”, etc. This may also explain why searching for Garifuna food returns so few results: restaurants that one would consider Garifunan may use “Belizean”, “Honduran”, etc. in their names and not specifically the identifier “Garifuna.” For the sake of not over-counting, I only searched Yelp for terms that included “Garifuna.” The lack of visibility of the Garifuna may be a reason for their low number of restaurants.
Ghanaians
Inhabitants to Eateries ratio (estimate): 3,000:1 (30,000:10)
Ghanaian cuisine prototypically demonstrated ethnic cuisine in ethnic neighborhoods: six eateries are in adjacent neighborhoods in the Bronx. One can make good guesses that these are truly ethnic neighborhoods by the presence of other organizations for Ghanaians (churches, cultural groups, etc.). Additionally, there are many similar cuisines in the areas the restaurants are located: African Americans in the Bronx and Harlem and other West Africans in the Bronx. This could help explain why there is a small concentration in Harlem.
Ghanaian Census Data
The U.S. census is an amazing resource created by the U.S. government as required by the Constitution. Not only are surveys taken every 10 years for general information like population, but some ad hoc surveys are taken that document more specific information in a one or five year basis. The one of interest here is the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) from 2018. Here, there is a question relating to peoples’ primary ancestry (code ANC1P). This has a somewhat ad hoc list of nationalities that people can choose from. In that list, “Ghanaian” appears, while Uyghur and Garifuna do not. Thus, I examined the number of people who responded with “Ghanaian” in all 55 NYC census districts (Public Use Microdata Areas, or PUMAs).
As we can see, the areas with more Ghanaians present, have more Ghanaian restaurants. Each district with more than 2,000 Ghanaians (excluding Far Rockaway, Breezy Point & Broad Channel (furthest south) and Hunts Point, Longwood & Melrose (darkest area)) have a restaurant in close proximity. In general, this measure validates our assumption that more people in an area will lead to more eateries representing that group.
Caveats to Results
In doing this project, it’s clear that eateries is not perfectly correlated or an easy way to determine the presence of an ethnic group in an area. For starters, pulling the data itself isn’t easy: even after the API calls are made, one needs to examine each case in particular to see if it “represents” the group. For my purposes, any restaurant that had words identifying it as part of the ethnic group either in the name, it’s descriptors, or in any of its reviews, was kept. The problems of an outsider defining what is and isn’t an ethnic restaurant are not lost on me. Further, the specifics can sometimes make a huge difference. For example, there are two restaurants that I categorized under “Uyghur” that more strongly identify with the Dungan, a different Muslim, Turkic-speaking group that originated in the same province as the Uyghurs. I simply don’t know enough about either group to determine whether they should/can be considered as Uyghur or not. Additionally, not just the groups themselves, but also the multiplicity of cuisines claimed by eateries presents a tricky cut-off point for what is or isn’t representative of a group. For example, I didn't include restaurants that claimed to cook “West African” food since it isn’t specific to Ghana. Where this cut-off should be is not clear.
In regards to this indicator itself being helpful for determining the visibility/number of people in an ethnic neighborhood, it’s quite clear that this is too simplistic. Imagine that we had equal numbers of Italians and Irish moving into the same area. It seems pretty apparent to me that all things being equal, there will be more Italian restaurants than Irish ones. Cultural factors both in the cooking culture of the immigrants themselves and in the tastes and familiarity of the incoming groups cuisine will play huge roles in the number of eateries the groups will establish. A more holistic mapping that includes cultural and religious organizations, among other things will give a much clearer picture of a groups presence. After all, I’ve seen hundreds if not thousands of French restaurants in my life, but few French cultural organizations.
Conclusion
Ethnic neighborhoods certainly exist in every city. Knowing where they are and how visible they are is another story. Simply noting how many eateries of a certain group there are in an area can be interesting, but is only a weak indicator of that group’s presence in that area. The Ghanaian example likely shows a success of this approach while the Garifuna and Uyghur examples, for different reasons, show why it is likely flawed. Factors such as host culture’s familiarity with cuisine, amount of time a group has lived in the area, the opportunities available to that group, and concentration of a group in an area all certainly play a role. It seems that if one wants to find the visible presence of a group in a certain area, it is best to look at a constellation of indicators and not only eateries.
You can play around with the data yourself on this app.
- This project originally intended to correlate the number of people of a certain group in an area to a number of eateries in that area. Unfortunately, determining the origin/birthplace of people in an area is not possible for a number of reasons. Primarily, the best questionnaire given by the U.S. Census (ANC1P) was about primary ancestry and the options given by this are limited. Thus we have an odd situation where there are about 5 categories for “African American” yet zero for Garifuna and Uyghur. Thus, depending on the group, it may be impossible to find easy accessible ancestry and location data. If anyone knows of one let me know!
**The quotes around halal are intended to note how “Halal” food in NYC refers to any muslim owned food truck. I do not intend to make any judgment on whether the food itself being halal certified or not.
