✦ Garden City, counted
Garden City by the numbers.
Every restaurant we track in Garden City, Nassau — measured on exactly the same scale as every other street in the region, which is the only way these figures mean anything next to anybody else’s.
The reason this site exists
Star averages can't tell anyone apart
62% of every place we track lands between 4.0 and 4.7 stars. The most common score of all is 4.3 — that badge is worn by 21 different restaurants. A number that everybody has is not information. The Sweet Score spreads the same places across 19 bands instead of one.
How the Sweet Score is built →
Where a street has a specialty
The blocks that are actually known for something
Not folklore — arithmetic. For every neighbourhood we ask what share of its restaurants belong to a category, and compare that to the same category’s share of the whole region. Garden City is 5.4× more Salads than the region average. These are the streets you go to on purpose.
Bars are the multiple against the regional average. Every town →
What people actually order
The 16 dishes reviewers name most
Pulled from what reviewers wrote, not from menus. If a dish shows up here it’s because people kept bringing it up unprompted — which is the only kind of recommendation worth anything.
The question everybody asks
Does spending more get you a better meal?
A little, and then it stops. The median $ place scores 41; the median $$$$ place scores 44. Four dollar signs buys you 3 points — on a scale where the gap between #1 and #50 in a single town is bigger than that.
| Price | Places | Median Sweet Score | Median ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| $ | 31 | 41 | 289 |
| $$ | 53 | 46 | 382 |
| $$$ | 4 | 54 | 756 |
| $$$$ | 6 | 44 | 208 |
The categories
What this region is made of
Every place belongs to every category it earned, so these add up to more than 129. The median column is the honest one — a category with a lot of places and a low median is a category where picking badly is easy.
| Category | Places | Median score | Ratings behind it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coffee | 29 | 38 | 10,972 |
| Dessert | 18 | 39 | 9,931 |
| Bakery | 16 | 39 | 4,893 |
| American | 14 | 43 | 12,850 |
| Bar & Grill | 12 | 52 | 5,382 |
| Breakfast & Brunch | 12 | 48 | 11,787 |
| Mexican | 7 | 51 | 5,442 |
| Burgers | 7 | 47 | 8,569 |
| Japanese | 7 | 45 | 3,515 |
| Deli | 6 | 51 | 1,327 |
| Asian | 6 | 54 | 2,582 |
| Italian | 6 | 50 | 6,873 |
| Sushi | 5 | 42 | 1,362 |
| Pizza | 5 | 55 | 1,950 |
| Salads | 5 | 47 | 2,237 |
| Fast Food | 4 | 57 | 5,090 |
| Latin | 3 | 76 | 2,539 |
| Indian | 3 | 16 | 2,728 |
The list nobody else can build
Loved, and almost nobody knows
High Sweet Score, barely any ratings. These are the places where the people who have been are near-unanimous and the crowd hasn’t arrived. This is what a percentile can find and a star average can’t.
The other end
The most-rated restaurants in the region
Volume, not quality — though the two turn out to be less related than anyone expects. These are the places everybody has an opinion about.
- Grand Lux CafeGarden City · 5,465 ratings68
- DJ's International BuffetGarden City · 4,599 ratings22
- The CubanGarden City · 4,370 ratings64
- Shake Shack WestburyGarden City · 3,667 ratings47
- Maggiano's Little ItalyGarden City · 2,733 ratings46
- Seasons 52Garden City · 2,692 ratings75
- The Capital GrilleGarden City · 2,089 ratings87
- Waterzooi Belgian Bistro & Oyster BarGarden City · 2,052 ratings48
- Ruth's Chris Steak HouseGarden City · 1,860 ratings66
- Venchi Chocolate & Gelato Roosevelt FieldGarden City · 1,790 ratings93
What the board can do for you
Counted, so you can filter by it
Every one of these is a list. Outdoor seating in August, somewhere that takes a reservation, somewhere that will let the dog sit down too.
- 48Outdoor seating
- 100Deliver
- 123Do takeout
- 44Take reservations
- 61Vegetarian options
- 89Good for kids
- 67Work for groups
- 4Allow dogs