Michelin likes SF and NYC the same. Sort of.

So the San Francisco Bay Area gets 28 Michelin-starred restaurants among 5.6 million people , vs. New York's 39 starred restaurants among 8 million people.

That puts San Francisco neck-and-neck with New York in per-capita starred restaurants -- about one per 200,000 people.

But NYC has four four-starred restaurants to our one. They are Per Se (yay Thomas Keller), Le Bernardin, Alain Ducasse and Jean-Georges.

Also, the Michelin people told me that in both cities, about 8 percent of surveyed restaurants receive a star.

Population figures are as of 2000, and I used the population for the areas Michelin actually covers, which in the Bay Area excludes Contra Costa County. In NYC it covers all five boroughs.

Linkage:

• Bay Area population stats (add up county population of Alameda, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Marin, Napa and Sonoma)
• PDF - New York population (all boroughs are included in Michelin survey)
• New York Michelin press release