Advertisement New Orleans secures top spot among 40 best cities for food Website puts together list of largest cities with best food in U.S. Share Shares Copy Link Copy

New Orleans is the best place for food.It's a fact that New Orleanians already know. But this week, Thrillist released their list of the "40 Biggest U.S. Cities, Ranked by Their Food" and New Orleans ranked No. 1."New Orleans is a city drenched in its cuisine, rooted in the culture of setting a pot of gumbo on the front porch and inviting over the masses or throwing a street-wide crawfish boil on a muggy spring day," according to Thrillist.com.First, it's important to note that the website ranked the New Orleans metropolitan area and not just the city of New Orleans, with an actual population of 343,829."Without its metropolitan statistical area, the city wouldn't have been even close to large enough for this list," Thrillist stated.But really, that's beside the point. The New Orleans area is a city filled with food for residents, tourists and self-proclaimed foodies alike.LINK: Best U.S. Cities for Food"When it comes to finding the most delicious, innovative food in the nation, small-town favorites simply can't stack up against the myriad restaurants that feed America's major metropolitan hubs each day," Thrillist stated.It goes on to say that most significant food trends typically begin in big cities and that the people living in them are eating what the rest of the country will soon be.But that's where New Orleans sets itself apart from the other cities like New York City or Houston. The Big Easy has both good, historic restaurants and small-town favorites (po' boys, red beans and rice, blackened redfish).READ: Online Publication Drafts Up First Ever New Orleans Streetcar Bar Map"It would be an unmitigated task to start naming all of the tiny Creole, Cajun, Vietnamese and Italian spots that fill in the huge gap between the new all-stars and the grand dames," Thrillist states.So how did the website compile the list? It gathered the food scene in every American city with a population of close to or greater than 500,000 people. Then those cities were ranked on their finest establishments, strength of dining cultures and signature contributions."Between the financial pull of the restaurant industry's biggest backers, the dense populaces hungry for new trends and the irresistible opportunity for chefs to prove themselves on a big stage," Thrillist adds. "U.S. cities drive our national culinary narrative forward."And in New Orleans, you could eat all day, all week, at any time of the day and never get a bad meal or "fully grasp the cuisines melting pot that fills the city."