Monthly research · first edition November 2026
NYC AI Dining Index
Which restaurants do AI assistants send New Yorkers to? Every month we ask the same 70 questions and publish what comes back, matched to public DOH inspection grades.
Method
- Questions
- 15 neighborhoods × 4 intents (best, cheap eats, date night, brunch), plus 10 citywide cuisines
- Engine
- Claude with live web search, New York location. More engines as we add them.
- Matching
- Recommended names matched to NYC DOH inspection records by exact name and borough
- Schedule
- 1st of every month, same questions
- Limits
- One run per question; AI answers vary. We publish the raw answers.
What each edition shows
- The 50 restaurants AI names most often, with mentions and DOH grade
- How concentrated recommendations are: the share taken by the top 20
- The top five per neighborhood
- The sites AI leans on most (guides, review sites, maps)
- The full dataset as JSON, free to cite
Data: api.elephantny.com/api/nyc/ai-dining-index
Get the first edition
For restaurant owners, journalists and researchers. One email a month.