Largest U.S. city without a Chinese restaurant?

March 25, 2009 9:59 PM

How big is the largest U.S. city without a Chinese restaurant?

The question has an answer, but I'm not even sure how to generate a plausible estimate. The largest I know of is Weston, CT (pop.10,037.)

posted by escabeche to Food & Drink (9 answers total)

Best answer: Maybe Kiryas Joel, NY? Population ~20k, and I would be very surprised if they had a chinese restaurant.
posted by kickingtheground at 10:09 PM on March 25, 2009

I don't know how it works in NY, but according to Wikipedia, Kiryas Joel is a village within the town of Monroe. KJ may not have a Chinese restaurant, but Monroe has several. Might need to define the terms carefully to get a good answer.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:19 PM on March 25, 2009

Ha! And I used to be one of those 10,037. Got the hell out of there.
BTW, Weston, Mass. (pop. 11K) doesn't have one, according to the googles.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 10:24 PM on March 25, 2009

Best answer: Possibly Mountain Brook, AL, population 20,604. If there is one there, Google's first 15 pages don't have it. (Note that the "Chez Lulu" which shows up on page 15 is apparently not actually a Chinese restaurant.)

If anyone wants to pick up where I left off, I checked everything in the 20k-30k range for New Mexico, Utah, Indiana, and Alabama. (Mountain Brook was the only one I found.)
posted by equalpants at 1:48 AM on March 26, 2009

This is a good question, and I don't have an answer, but these links at Coding Horror might be interesting/useful.
posted by hoborg at 7:35 AM on March 26, 2009

Response by poster: Kiryas Joel is a brilliant suggestion! I haven't decided whether "village within a town" counts as a separate municipality for the purposes of the question. I have an e-mail out to my friend in Mountain Brook, AL to verify the Chinese-restaurantlessness of that burg. And people should read hoborg's links, which are great -- indeed, my interest in this question is exactly that it seems kind of impervious to back-of-the-envelope heuristic estimation.
posted by escabeche at 7:43 AM on March 26, 2009

I briefly lived in Mountain Brook, AL in 2001 and can confirm that then, at least, there wasn't a Chinese restaurant that I ever saw. Chez Lulu is a great little bakery, but ethnic food is few and far between unless you leave Mountain Brook proper and get into actual Birmingham.
posted by mostlymartha at 10:29 AM on March 26, 2009

NYT reporter Jennifer 8. Lee wrote a book on Chinese restaurants in the US and Canada. I asked her this question on twitter and she said "looks like it could be weston, ct. but because they have like barely any commercial development there."
posted by mattbucher at 12:56 PM on March 26, 2009

Response by poster: To give credit where credit is due, Weston, CT was suggested by an anonymous commenter at my blog, a link to which I sent Jennifer 8. Lee when I asked her this question yesterday. So let it not be thought that independent investigators are arising at the same answer.
posted by escabeche at 5:05 PM on March 26, 2009