How Florida Chefs Stack Up Against Rest of America

Fact Checked by Nate Hamilton

The two constants of the state of Florida are climate and cuisine, apparently, as the Sunshine State is among the top states for top-line chefs in the U.S.  

As we kick off Culinary Arts Month this July, FloridaBet.com got hungry and took a quick break from Florida sports betting updates to look at which states across the United States have access to the best of the best chefs that you can find in America.  

Between James Beard Award winners, like Miami’s Jumbo’s and Versailles and Miami Beach’s Joe’s Stone Crab, and a host of other famous culinary destinations, there’s no shortage of top restaurants and chefs in the state.  

FloridaBet.com utilized Best Chefs America, which has the 5,000 best chefs in a database to establish the top culinary talent in the United States, to collect the state location for each of the top chefs.  

We then utilized the estimated July 1st 2022 Census state population numbers to figure out the states with the best chefs by capita. Note this is where they are located, not where they are from.

States With The Best Chefs Per Capita In America

Overall RankState# of Chefs on ListChefs Per Capita
1Vermont460.000071
2Rhode Island490.000045
3Nevada1250.000039
4Hawaii480.000033
5Maine410.000030
6Wyoming170.000029
7New York5400.000027
8Delaware260.000026
9Oregon1020.000024
10Louisiana1060.000023
11Colorado1300.0000222
12Virginia1920.0000221
13New Jersey1980.000021
14California7960.000020
15Massachusetts1160.0000166
16New Hampshire230.0000164
17Connecticut570.000015
18Alaska110.0000149
19Washington1110.0000142
20Montana150.0000133
21New Mexico280.0000132
22Florida2700.00001214
23South Carolina640.00001211
24North Carolina1280.0000119
25Idaho230.0000118

Florida’s Top Chefs Among Best In Nation

Nationally, Florida finished with the 22nd highest per capita number of top chefs, at 0.00001214, with the state sandwiched between No. 21 New Mexico (0.0000132) and No. 23 South Carolina (0.00001211).  

Overall, states like Vermont (0.000071), Rhode Island (0.000045), Nevada (0.000039), Hawaii (0.000033) and Maine (0.000030) led the nation in terms of the number of top chefs per capita.  

On a raw numbers basis, Florida’s 270 chefs ranked third nationally, coming in behind California (796) and New York (540) and ahead of New Jersey (198).   

Conversely, the states with the lowest number of top chefs overall were Alaska (11), Montana (15) and Wyoming (17), though each of the three had a low enough population basin to post a higher per capita figure than the state of Florida.  

Author

Christopher Boan

Christopher Boan writes for FloridaBet.com and has been covering sports and sports betting for more than seven years, with experience at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.

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