The Most Common Restaurant Names in America

From a prime location in the city to eye-catching wall murals inside, restaurants all across the country have taken steps to draw people in. These efforts can still be thwarted however with something as simple as a common restaurant name.

It’s no surprise that many restaurants nationwide share the same name. Many of us can even find the same restaurant names repeated in our own town. Because of this, our team wanted to learn which restaurant names are most common in America.

To find out, we analyzed hundreds of thousands of Google business listings. Read on to see if any of the top-rated restaurants with common names are in your city.

Key takeaways

• “China Wok” is the most common restaurant name in the U.S.
• Chinese cuisine has the most commonly used restaurant names.
• Cambridge, MA, has the most unique restaurant names in the country.
• North Las Vegas, NV, has the most restaurants with commonly used names.

The most common restaurant names in the U.S. ranked

It comes as no surprise that restaurants across the country have the same name, even though they are not a part of a chain. In some parts of the country, the same restaurant name is even repeated within your own city limits.

Leading the way with 80 locations across the country is “China Wok.” Of the 100 most common names, 52 belong to Chinese restaurants. This brings the total of common Chinese restaurant names to 1,002.

Also in Chinese cuisine are “China King,” “China House,” “China Star,” and “Great Wall,” all rounding out the top five restaurant names respectively. Although two restaurants share the 10th spot on our list with 29 establishments each, Japanese cuisine cracked the top of the list as “Hibachi Express” and “China Express” tied.

Looking at other cuisines, “Taste of India” is the most common name among Indian restaurants in the U.S. For chicken wing restaurants, 21 locations claim to be “America’s Best Wings.”

Although a common name can make a restaurant seem less unique, there are many ways for an owner to help their business stand out from the rest. From their efforts to give back to their community to the special deals offered during the holidays, there is no shortage of ideas to ensure your restaurant won’t be simply forgotten.

The highest-rated restaurants by cuisine

With so many restaurants sharing names across the country, we wanted to find which are the best to visit. To find this, we looked at star ratings for each location of the most common name by cuisine.

According to online reviews, the best “China Wok” in the country is located in Savannah, GA. The restaurant located on King George Boulevard has a 4.7 star rating out of five, and is open Tuesday through Sunday, only closing their doors on Mondays.

Attention North Carolinians who love Japanese cuisine, the top-rated “Hibachi Express” is located in King, NC! About a 20-minute drive from Winston-Salem, foodies can find the 4.7 star-rated restaurant.

They say “Everything is bigger in Texas,” and it looks like the state is home to some of the best food as well. We found the top-rated restaurants for chicken wings, buffets, Asian cuisine, and seafood are all located throughout the Lone Star State. With a 4.2 star rating, “America’s Best Wings” in Dallas, TX, claimed the top spot for the highest-rated location for chicken wings.

Arlington, TX, is home to two of the top-rated commonly named restaurants on our list with “King Buffet” and “Asian Buffet” both calling the city home. If you find yourself in the area hoping to try both buffets, you’re in luck as the 4.4 and 4.2 star-rated restaurants are less than 20 minutes apart.

The cities with the most and least unique restaurant names

While we have found the most common restaurant names are repeated time and time again in cities across the U.S., some parts of the country take a more unique approach. To determine this, our team collected restaurant names by city to calculate the percentage of restaurants with unique names by city.

In first place for the most unique restaurant names is Cambridge, MA, with 84.7%of establishments with unique names. In second place is Bakersfield, CA, at 78.0%, followed by Miami, FL, with 77.9% in third.

So if you find yourself growing tired of the same chain restaurants in neighboring cities, try spending an afternoon checking out the cuisine in the cities with the most unique restaurant names.

On the other end of the spectrum, some cities are home to multiple restaurants with the same name. Leading the way for the least unique names is North Las Vegas, NV, with only 26.2% of restaurants having a distinctive name.

In second place with 38.2% of restaurants having a unique name is Riverside, CA, and rounding out the top three is Lincoln, NE, with 39.9%.

Trending first names in restaurant monikers

So you want to have a unique restaurant name, why not name it after yourself? After seeing plenty of restaurants sporting the owner’s name, we decided to find the most common first names used for restaurants.

Leading the way with 152 restaurants in the U.S. is Joe. The top-rated “Joe” restaurants are located in Kansas City, KS, “Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que,” Fairfield, CA, “Joe’s Buffet,” and Honolulu, HI, “Joe’s Grill Express.”

Second on our list is “Tony,” with 138 restaurants sporting the name across the country. The top-rated restaurants with the name are in Kapa’a, HI, “Tony’s Catch,” Montgomery, TX, “Tony’s Italian Delicatessen,” and Chicago, IL, “Tony’s Italian Deli & Subs.”

With just short of 100 locations, “Jimmy” takes third place as the most common first name. The top-rated “Jimmy” restaurants can be found in Indianapolis, IN, “Jimmy’s Diner,” Melbourne, FL, “Jimmy’s GR Original,” and Evansville, IN, “Jimmy’s UNA Pizza.”

Check out the table below to see if any of the top-rated restaurants for the 10 most common names are located in the city you call home.

Conclusion

Changing the name of your restaurant is a major change and it can in turn cost a restaurant owner a lot of money. The good news is there are other ways to add uniqueness to your business and help you stand out from the crowd, including the crowd of restaurants that might share your name. How a business looks from the outside, whether viewed through online photos or while just driving by, is important as well.

At Tinting Chicago, we want to help you upgrade your business. Get started today by booking an appointment to learn about adding a stained glass window film to your exterior, or boosting your interior design with a wall mural and floor graphics.

Methodology

To determine the most common restaurant names in America, we reviewed Google reviews data for over 300,000 U.S. restaurant establishments. Restaurant names were ranked based on the total number of occurrences of the name across all non-chain restaurants nationwide. Chain and non-chain ownership status was determined by the uniqueness of a restaurant’s URL; restaurants whose name and URL domain name occur only once nationwide were deemed to be independent of chain ownership.

Restaurants with the same name were also compared to one another using average Google reviews rating. Only restaurants with at least 50 Google reviews were considered. In the case of a tie, the restaurant with the greater number of reviews was ranked higher.

Restaurant-level data was aggregated to the city level using zip code and place-level boundary definitions from the U.S. Census Bureau. Cities were ranked based on the number of restaurants whose name occurs only once nationwide as a percentage of all restaurants. Only cities with at least 100 restaurants and 65,000 residents were considered.

Our data consists of Google search results for “restaurants” + “zip code” for all zip codes in the 500 largest principal cities nationwide. The resulting dataset of approximately 300,000 restaurants is a fraction of the roughly 700,000 restaurant establishments estimated to exist in the United States, and as a result restaurant name tallies may reflect the limited sample size.

Data was collected in January 2024.