✦ Morningside Heights, counted
Morningside Heights by the numbers.
Every restaurant we track in Morningside Heights, Manhattan — 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
63% 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 14 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. Morningside Heights is 12.1× more African 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.
| Price | Places | Median Sweet Score | Median ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| $ | 48 | 32 | 198 |
| $$ | 33 | 60 | 622 |
The categories
What this region is made of
Every place belongs to every category it earned, so these add up to more than 113. 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 | 27 | 32 | 10,703 |
| Deli | 15 | 54 | 1,714 |
| Chinese | 10 | 20 | 3,293 |
| Pizza | 9 | 28 | 6,373 |
| Fast Food | 9 | 54 | 4,173 |
| Dessert | 9 | 70 | 5,172 |
| Asian | 8 | 46 | 3,912 |
| Bakery | 8 | 47 | 4,706 |
| Italian | 7 | 28 | 4,618 |
| Burgers | 6 | 14 | 4,936 |
| American | 6 | 32 | 6,911 |
| Bar & Grill | 6 | 55 | 3,746 |
| Japanese | 5 | 46 | 3,608 |
| Sushi | 4 | 38 | 2,010 |
| Juice Bars | 3 | 75 | 444 |
| Mexican | 3 | 22 | 1,643 |
| Breakfast & Brunch | 3 | 28 | 1,457 |
| Salads | 3 | 54 | 751 |
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.
- FROZEN LOVEMorningside Heights · 72 ratings85
- South of the Clouds云之南upper westsideMorningside Heights · 124 ratings83
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.
- Tom's RestaurantMorningside Heights · 3,815 ratings27
- Le MondeMorningside Heights · 3,407 ratings88
- The Hungarian Pastry ShopMorningside Heights · 2,542 ratings78
- Koronet PizzaMorningside Heights · 2,404 ratings69
- Yemeni RestaurantMorningside Heights · 1,947 ratings93
- Jin Ramen West HarlemMorningside Heights · 1,598 ratings46
- PisticciMorningside Heights · 1,552 ratings62
- Charles Pan-Fried ChickenMorningside Heights · 1,545 ratings94
- Nikko Hibachi Asian FusionMorningside Heights · 1,523 ratings24
- McDonald'sMorningside Heights · 1,381 ratings10
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.
- 24Outdoor seating
- 90Deliver
- 107Do takeout
- 23Take reservations
- 44Vegetarian options
- 64Good for kids
- 38Work for groups
- 5Allow dogs