See where the Sacramento food scene ranks among U.S. cities. (It’s higher than you think)

A study by WalletHub released Monday named Sacramento the No. 12 food city in America for its strength across 30 different categories.

Sacramento has the most affordable restaurants per capita with ratings of 4.5 stars or more on Yelp of any city in the U.S., the study found. It also has the most international grocery stores per capita among the 182 cities WalletHub surveyed, which ranged from the country’s largest metropolises to Nampa, Idaho.

Sacramento also placed well in food festivals per capita (10th), farmers markets and CSAs per capita (10th), number of cooking schools per capita (11th), food and wine tours per capita (13th), number of grocery stores per capita (18th), restaurants per capita (20th) and coffee and tea shops per capita (20th).

Portland, Oregon, topped the list of the country’s best food cities, followed by New York and Miami. San Francisco and Los Angeles followed as fourth and fifth, San Diego was seventh and Oakland was 20th. Stockton finished near the bottom of the list at 162nd.

Sacramento did lag behind in a few categories, including average cost of groceries (169th) and average cost for a six-pack of Heineken or 1.5-liter bottle of Chablis/Chenin Blanc (122nd).

The Kitchen received Sacramento’s first Michelin star this year, with Bib Gourmands going to the more affordable Canon, Mother and Frank Fat’s. Ten other local restaurants received “plates” in the travel company’s guide, intended to designate very good but not great places.

This story was originally published October 7, 2019 at 1:18 PM.