[matthewowen]

Cities don't work that way though. Different areas have different mixes of residential/retail/business/nightlife.

If you slice off the more residential areas, of course you'll wind up with a big population with a smaller level of cultural activity, because cultural activity is often concentrated away from residential areas: people commute from Queens to Manhattan, and then they stay there to eat/drink. That's an oversimplification that doesn't apply to everyone... but that's the broad pattern.

For reference, according to http://a816-restaurantinspection.nyc.gov/RestaurantInspectio... Manhattan has about twice as many eateries as Queens. But that doesn't tell the whole picture, because a greater proportion of those Queens eateries are likely to be neighbourhood places, diners, delis: places that the New Yorker is obviously not going to review.

So yeah, there's probably some bias... but destination restaurants are concentrated in Lower Manhattan. That's the way it is. You should expect New Yorker reviews to reflect that.