After Georgio's cafe got a favorable review in a travel guidebook, the

the number (E) exceeded the number of local customers
proper comparison
You cannot say the number exceeded the local customers because this would mean a literal number ex. 5 is more than some human beings.

MANHATTAN REVIEW OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

The first thing you have to untangle is a simple grammatical mistake. What does the excess or exceeding refer to? It refers to the number, not the tourists. Number is singular, so you would not say ‘the number were’ in excess, nor would you say ‘number numbered’. That means choices A and D are wrong. What else does number refer to? Does the number of tourists exceed local customers or the number of customers? Remember, you can’t compare apples and oranges. Choice C refers to the wrong thing. Also, the numbers didn’t have anything, per se, so choice B is incorrect. Choice E is the correct answer.

Just wanted to verify my understanding:
A : Wrong ==> "Number of" is Singular . So we can get rid of Option A as it has "were". SV doesn't agree. Additionally "In Excess" sounded weird when I was looking at the meaning of the whole sentence. So my question is , if the SV matched in this case .. can it be a right answer or my logic of eliminating it because of meaning confusion is correct?
B : Number ==> had an excess over the local customer is wrong. Number cannot be in excess over customers themselves.
C : Number cannot exceed the local customer itself. It has to exceed the number of local customer
D : Number of Customers ==> Numbered is wrong
E: Correct for the reason mentioned in C

After Georgio's cafe got a favorable review in a travel guidebook, the number of tourists eating there were in excess of the number of local customers going regularly.

(A) were in excess of the number of local customers
(B) had an excess over the local customers who were
(C) exceeded the local customers who were
(D) numbered more than the local customers
(E) exceeded the number of local customers

Rules:
1)
the number of X - singular
a number of X - plural
2)
Compare the number of X to the number of X
Splits:
the number vs the local customers
exceeded vs were in excess of

(A) were in excess of the number of local customers ----the number … were-- SV number ERROR

(B) had an excess over the local customers who were --"had an excess" is inappropriate wrong tense

(C) exceeded the local customers who were ---comparison between the number and human beings

(D) numbered more than the local customers --' the number… numbered' is redundant

E) Exceeded the number of local customers ---Correct

ANS - E

Comparing number to number is probably be the best hint for the question to eliminate most the answer choices

1)This is concision testing problem, the underlined part of the sentence is too wordy and the meaning can be conveyed in less number of words and more effectively....So we can eliminate option A
2) Options B and D are non sensical.
3) between C and E on checking for parallelism, we can see that option E. "number of tourists" to "number of local customers" makes more sense. So eliminate option C

The answer is E.