Study: Philly is short on burger shops

Wait. Philadelphia, whose citizenry is nationally chided for its love of fat and carbs, is actually underserved by burger shops?

So says Trulia, the residential real-estate site.

To mark National Hamburger Day, Trulia data guy Ralph McLaughlin crunched the number of households in the top 100 metro areas in the United States against the number of burger shops, as counted by and defined by Yelp.

The result is something called the Burger Density Index. A low score in a town, says Trulia (optimistically), means people have fewer people to compete with in line for a burger.

The lowest BDI was found in Orange County, Calif., which had a score of 473 - that is, 1 burger joint per 473 households. Since Trulia is a real estate site, it also shows the median house-listing price in a graphic here.

Las Vegas was second, with a 504, followed by Honolulu with a 535.

Philadelphia was #99, second from the bottom, with a 1316. Camden, at #98, was right above it, with a 1290. The least-served market, by Trulia's measure, was Syracuse, with a 1439.

Who'd think that Orange County has nearly triple the burger joints per capita than Philly does?

Some of the disparity has to do with the terminology, McLaughlin suggested. Lots of restaurants serve burgers, but Yelp uses user feedback to tag "burger joints."

For the record, McLaughlin, who lives in the Bay Area, prefers Five Guys. He enjoys In-N-Out when he seeks a value burger.