Are Alaskan cities hotspots for dining out? Data from one recent survey says yes.
Both Anchorage and Juneau have made the list of the nation's "most restaurant-crazy cities," using data from the The NPD Group's annual ReCount survey, and compiled by Huffington Post.
The list based the rankings on the number of restaurants per 10,000 people.
Anchorage ranked seventh in the nation based on most restaurants per residents. With a population listed as 428,041 and 1012 restaurants, Anchorage has 23.6 restaurants per 10,000 residents, according to the survey.
Coming in first place, beating out other locales like Bend, Ore., Panama City, Fla., and even New York City with its 51,511 restaurants, is Alaska's own capitol city, Juneau.
With a population of 31,094 and 112 restaurants, the city has 36 restaurants per 10,000 people.
The group notes that it broke its findings into metropolitan areas larger than the one the Census Bureau uses -- hence the discrepancy with Anchorage's July 2011 census data showing the city's population at 295,570 - meaning that the survey may be somewhat skewed toward the low-density areas in the Western U.S., as opposed to high-density urban populations in regions like New England.
The Group's data indicates that there were 616,008 restaurants operating in the U.S. in 2012, up 0.7 percent from the year before, making the average density in the country about 20 restaurants for every 10,000 people.