Measurement · updated October 20, 2026
New York City Restaurant Discovery Report
See which NYC restaurant details are easy to find
Find the gaps that can hide a patio, a family meal or a great evening out. Compare the venue categories below, then open a profile or ask us to check your restaurant.
Category coverage
Every category in the network taxonomy, with the number of New York City venues currently resolving to it. Categories are published as pages at one venue and up. A category at zero is a gap, and gaps are the most useful column in this table.
| Category | Family | Venues | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live Music | The Room | 6 | Covered |
| BBQ and Smokehouses | On the Menu | 4 | Covered |
| The Whole Family Table | The Occasion | 3 | Covered |
| Craft Cocktail Programs | On the Menu | 1 | Thin |
| Patios and Outdoor Tables | The Room | 2 | Thin |
| Sports on TV | The Occasion | 1 | Thin |
| Vegan and Plant-Based | On the Menu | 2 | Thin |
| Big Groups | The Occasion | 0 | No coverage |
| Black-Owned | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
| Brunch | On the Menu | 0 | No coverage |
| Celebration Restaurants | The Occasion | 0 | No coverage |
| Chef-Driven Kitchens | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| Dance Floors | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Date Night | The Occasion | 0 | No coverage |
| Dog-Friendly Patios | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Easy to Get Into | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
| Gluten-Free Kitchens | On the Menu | 0 | No coverage |
| Great Views | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Historic Rooms | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| In the Community | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| In the MICHELIN Guide | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| Late-Night Food | On the Menu | 0 | No coverage |
| Locally Sourced | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
| Neighborhood Institutions | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| Origin Stories | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| Private Dining and Buyouts | The Occasion | 0 | No coverage |
| Quiet Enough to Talk | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Seafood and Oysters | On the Menu | 0 | No coverage |
| Service Rituals | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| Staff Pay and Benefits | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
| Steakhouses | On the Menu | 0 | No coverage |
| Sushi | On the Menu | 0 | No coverage |
| Sustainable Kitchens | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
| Tableside Experiences | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Waterfront Dining | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Women-Owned | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
What New York City is not discoverable for at all
These are real reasons people choose a restaurant, and right now not one venue in our New York City dataset is filed under any of them. Some of those are our research gaps. Some are the city's. Telling them apart is the next piece of work, and it is the reason this list is published instead of hidden.
- Big Groups Will they seat twelve of us?
- Black-Owned Who owns this?
- Brunch Where is brunch worth the wait?
- Celebration Restaurants Where do we do the birthday?
- Chef-Driven Kitchens Is somebody actually cooking here?
- Dance Floors Where is the floor actually full?
- Date Night Where do I take somebody I want to impress?
- Dog-Friendly Patios Can the dog come?
- Easy to Get Into Can everybody at the table get in the door?
- Gluten-Free Kitchens Can this kitchen actually handle it?
- Great Views What am I looking at while I eat?
- Historic Rooms What was this building before?
- In the Community What does this place do when it is not serving dinner?
- In the MICHELIN Guide Who has the inspectors paying attention?
- Late-Night Food What is still open?
- Locally Sourced Who are they buying from?
- Neighborhood Institutions What has been here forever?
- Origin Stories Who built this and why?
- Private Dining and Buyouts Can we take a room?
- Quiet Enough to Talk Can we actually hear each other?
- Seafood and Oysters Who is getting good product in?
- Service Rituals What do they do that nobody else does?
- Staff Pay and Benefits What does the restaurant publish for its team?
- Steakhouses Where do I take a steak night seriously?
- Sushi Who is behind the counter?
- Sustainable Kitchens What happens to what they do not serve?
- Tableside Experiences What happens at the table?
- Waterfront Dining Can I eat next to the water?
- Women-Owned Who owns this?
What machines can read
Measured on 29 of 29 venue websites. Each bar is the share of scanned sites that pass that check, counting only the sites where we could determine an answer. A site we could not read at all is reported as unknown, never as a failure.
The description is what gets quoted when a search engine or assistant summarizes the venue. 11 pass, 18 fail.
A Restaurant, BarOrPub, or LocalBusiness type is what puts a venue into local answer sets. 12 pass, 17 fail.
Hours are the most time-sensitive fact in local search and the most commonly stale. 17 pass, 12 fail.
Structured data is how a machine knows this page describes a restaurant rather than a blog post. 21 pass, 8 fail.
A menu behind a PDF or an image is invisible to every system that reads text. 23 pass, 6 fail.
Linked profiles are how a machine confirms it is looking at one business and not two. 27 pass, 2 fail.
A venue whose website cannot be read has no source of truth for any other system to draw on. 29 pass, 0 fail.
Browsers and crawlers both discount sites that are not served securely. 29 pass, 0 fail.
A site that never states its own address cannot confirm the entity anywhere else. 29 pass, 0 fail.
A robots.txt that blocks AI crawlers removes the venue from AI-assisted discovery entirely. 28 pass, 0 fail, 1 unknown.
Who leads the categories that matter most
Ranked on measured readability, not on opinion and not on spend. A venue climbs this by publishing more about itself in a form a machine can read.
Live Music
- Hill Country Barbecue Market 88% readable
- Ellen’s Stardust Diner 82% readable
- Blue Note Jazz Club 71% readable
BBQ and Smokehouses
- Hill Country Barbecue Market 88% readable
- Pig Beach BBQ Queens 88% readable
- Hometown Bar-B-Que 82% readable
The Whole Family Table
- Ellen’s Stardust Diner 82% readable
- Radegast Hall & Biergarten 65% readable
- Brooklyn Bowl 59% readable
How this was measured
Venue records are researched by hand and dated. Nothing is guessed: a field we cannot verify is left empty, and an empty field counts against the record rather than getting filled with something plausible.
Website checks are run by our own scanner against each venue's own site and its robots.txt. It reads what is publicly served, at normal request rates, identifying itself honestly. It does not log in, does not scrape anything behind a form, and stores only the pass, fail, or unknown result of each check.
Discovery categories are resolved from a venue's structured attributes plus explicit editorial tagging for the things attributes cannot express, like an origin story or a service ritual. The full category taxonomy is public at /data/discovery-categories.json and the venue dataset is public at /api/places.json.
Venues can pay for extra attention here. Paid spots are always labeled as sponsored and kept out of every measurement on this page. A score only moves when what a venue shows the world gets better.
Want your own line in this report?
We will tell you what we can currently discover about your restaurant, what search and AI appear able to understand about it, and what they are missing. That part is free.