Here’s How Charlotte Ranks As a Foodie City

CHARLOTTE, NC — Charlotte may be known as a banking town, but it’s also not a bad city for folks who love food. When it comes to the best foodie scenes in the U.S., the Queen City ranks in the top third of nearly 200 cities in the country, according to a new study.

Personal finance website WalletHub.com released its foodie study this week, identifying all the best — and worst — cities for folks to get their grub on. Using metrics that break down various aspects of affordability as well as diversity, accessibility, and quality, WalletHub.com's expert foodie panel examined 182 of the most populated U.S. cities to determine which had the best food scene.

Charlotte came in at No. 61 overall out of the 182 cities, behind Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and ahead of Jersey City, New Jersey.

WalletHub.com's point-based ranking for affordability considered metrics like the cost of groceries, access and affordability of high-quality restaurants, the cost of meals at restaurants, taxes for sales, restaurants, and food, and the average price for beer and wine.

The ranking for diversity, accessibility, and quality was weighted a bit more heavily. For that dimension, WalletHub.com's experts considered metrics such as restaurants per capita, the ratio of full service restaurants to fast food establishments, restaurants diversity, Yelp's average rankings, food trucks per capita, farmers markets programs, breweries per capita, ice cream shops per capita, coffee and tea shops per capita, gourmet specialty food stores per capita, butcher shops, kitchen supplies, food festivals, cooking schools, and more.

For each dimension category, Charlotte ranked no. 66 for affordability and no. 61 for diversity, accessibility, and quality.

To review the full report, visit WalletHub.com.

(For more news like this, find your local Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here.)

Photo via Shutterstock