How Many Reviews Do Top Florida Restaurants Have?

Miami Beach, where the typical top restaurant listing holds 5,354 Google reviews, then Doral (5,328), Fort Lauderdale (5,118), Sweetwater (4,140), Daytona Beach (4,088), St. Augustine (3,895) and St. Pete Beach (3,768). In every one of those cities, 18 or more of the top 20 listings are past 100 reviews.

Many beach and visitor cities sit near the top of the table. That is a pattern in the review counts, not a measured visitor count, so read it as a sign of how much traffic those kitchens see, not as a cause.

Port St. John, where the typical top restaurant listing holds 317 Google reviews, then Ocoee (338), Alachua (420), Apopka (548), Temple Terrace (561), Merritt Island (565) and Seffner (575). Only three of the 93 cities sit under 500.

Even the lowest bar is hundreds of reviews. A restaurant that opens in Port St. John with 40 reviews is still well behind the listings it has to pass.

The typical top Orlando restaurant listing holds 1,697 Google reviews at an average rating of 4.47. Tampa's holds 2,967 at 4.56, about 1.7 times Orlando's count. In both cities all 20 of the top 20 listings are past 100 reviews.

Miami proper and Jacksonville are not among the 93 cities we track. The nearest measured markets are Miami Beach (5,354), Doral (5,328), Fort Lauderdale (5,118) and Pembroke Pines (2,935).

Cape Canaveral 2,695, Melbourne 2,087, Cocoa Beach 1,945, Palm Bay 1,326, Titusville 1,158, Cocoa 1,087, Viera 832, Rockledge 832, Merritt Island 565 and Port St. John 317 (typical top listing, top 20 per city, July 2026). The beach end of the county carries a higher bar than the river end.

A separate audit of nine Space Coast restaurants in March 2026 found a median 485 Google reviews and a median owner reply rate of 22%. In that small audit, the reviews were there and the replies were not.

Restaurants carry the highest bar of the 12 trades in the index by a wide margin. The typical top listing holds 1,307 reviews for restaurants, 429 for dentists, 276 for HVAC, 161 for auto repair, 142 for salons, 119 for plumbers, 76 for roofers, 64 for law firms, 54 for landscaping, 51 for electricians, 39 for real estate and 17 for general contractors (medians of 93 cities, 2026).

A restaurant serves hundreds of customers a week and each one can leave a review, so the count climbs in a way a roofer's never will. The practical result is that a rating alone separates nobody; recency, photos and replies do.

The typical top restaurant listing is rated 4.55 (median of the 93 city averages; the city averages run from 4.41 in Port St. John to 4.78 in Doral). In the typical city, a quarter of the top 20 sit at 4.4 or below.

A 4.6 does not stand out in a city where the top 20 average 4.55. The count, the pace of new reviews and the owner replies are what a diner can see at a glance.

No city is empty. All 93 are heavily contested, meaning 12 or more of the top 20 listings hold 100 or more reviews; in the typical city it is 19 of 20, and in 23 cities it is all 20.

The most open markets are Port St. John (27), Ocoee (26), Alachua (15), Fellsmere (12) and Seffner (11). Those cities take less time to crack, not no time.

Not the city's bar on day one. Compare yourself with the top 20 listings in your own city, not with a statewide or national figure, and watch the pace rather than the total: a listing adding reviews every week with an owner reply on each reads as busy, and a listing stuck at 90 since last spring reads as closed.

Ask after the meal, in words that invite the dish and the view, reply the same week, and keep the hours, menu and photos right so the reviews land on a listing worth tapping.

The Florida Local Search Index. For each of 93 Florida cities we pulled the top 20 open listings for restaurants from Google Places (90 cities on July 29, 2026, 3 on October 10, 2026), 1,860 listings in all, and took the median review count and the average rating of each city's 20. The statewide figure is the median of those 93 city figures.

The index is first-party and carries no national statistics. Figures for Jacksonville and Miami proper come from a different, unmeasured source and are not mixed in.