Searchable asked ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity where to eat in 55 US cities, collecting 174,142 answers to general, diner-type and cuisine questions. We measured how often AI recommends the same restaurants, which ones it names most, and how many of each city's highest-rated restaurants it leaves out.
1 in 4
frequent US AI chatbot users ask AI to find them a place to eat
1 in 12
highly rated restaurants are invisible to local AI recommendations
57%
of AI restaurant recommendations repeat the same five restaurants
- (01)The cities where AI recommends the same restaurants most often
- (02)How often asking again gets you a restaurant AI hasn't already named
- (03)The restaurants AI recommends most in every city
- (04)How many of each city's highest-rated restaurants AI recommends, and how many it never names
- (05)How often AI repeats itself when diners ask for a cuisine
- (06)How the four AI chatbots differ in what they recommend
- (07)Which websites AI cites when it recommends a restaurant
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How we did it
Searchable asked ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity for restaurant recommendations in 55 major US cities and tourist destinations over six days in October 2026. This produced 174,142 answers on the best places to eat in general, for nine types of cuisine and for other requirements such as hidden gems and independent restaurants.
For each city, we measured how often AI repeats the same restaurants, and what share of the city's highest-rated restaurants it recommends regularly, sometimes or never.
A city's highest-rated restaurants are those at the top of Tripadvisor's ranking for it, rated 4 stars or more with at least 50 reviews. We checked each one on Google Maps and removed any that had closed, were not restaurants or sat outside the city, refilling from Tripadvisor's next-ranked restaurants where its list allowed. That left between 52 and 98 restaurants per city. Because the lists differ in length, one city shouldn't be compared with another on this measure.
To size demand, we classified every prompt that 75,308 US users of ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude sent between 1 January and 20 September 2026 in Searchable's opt-in consumer panel. Among frequent users, the 6,638 who sent 250 or more prompts over the period (roughly one a day), 1 in 4 (25.6%) asked AI to recommend or find somewhere to eat.