How Florida Chefs Stack Up Against Rest of America

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 1^st 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 Rank	State	# of Chefs on List	Chefs Per Capita
1	Vermont	46	0.000071
2	Rhode Island	49	0.000045
3	Nevada	125	0.000039
4	Hawaii	48	0.000033
5	Maine	41	0.000030
6	Wyoming	17	0.000029
7	New York	540	0.000027
8	Delaware	26	0.000026
9	Oregon	102	0.000024
10	Louisiana	106	0.000023
11	Colorado	130	0.0000222
12	Virginia	192	0.0000221
13	New Jersey	198	0.000021
14	California	796	0.000020
15	Massachusetts	116	0.0000166
16	New Hampshire	23	0.0000164
17	Connecticut	57	0.000015
18	Alaska	11	0.0000149
19	Washington	111	0.0000142
20	Montana	15	0.0000133
21	New Mexico	28	0.0000132
22	Florida	270	0.00001214
23	South Carolina	64	0.00001211
24	North Carolina	128	0.0000119
25	Idaho	23	0.0000118

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

Lead Reporter

@cgboan

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.