According to The Daily Meal, Texas is still primarily home to barbecue and Tex-Mex. Oh, and, okay, maybe a little bit of seafood.
The national food website released its list of The 101 Best Restaurants in America this morning, and, as expected, Texas -- and Houston -- was mostly ignored, with only six Lone Star State restaurants being spotlighted.
The one area in which the list and the recently announced James Beard Award semifinalists agreed was that Reef, helmed by Beard-nominated Chef Bryan Caswell, is still one of the best restaurants in Houston, going strong since opening in 2007.
Reef, however, was the only restaurant spotlighted in Houston.
To spare you the agony of clicking through the entire slideshow to see the other Texas restaurants that made the cut, here's the list:
- Fearing's, Dallas
- Fonda San Miguel, Austin
- Kreuz Market, Lockhart
- Lambert's Downtown BBQ, Austin
- Lonesome Dove, Ft. Worth
The list was topped, nationally, by California's French Laundry in the No. 1 spot and New York's Per Se at No. 2. And while neither of these are particularly exciting or groundbreaking choices, I can't really fault The Daily Meal for branching out a bit and including 'cue connoisseur favorite Kreuz Market on its list.
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"Naming the 101 best restaurants in the country is tricky business, needless to say," said Colman Andrews, the editorial director of The Daily Meal, "and we expect controversy."
"But we drew on the opinions, and the votes, of many of the top food experts in the country. Only with the help of their experience and expertise could we have put together such a wide-ranging and definitive list."
And while The Daily Meal proclaims that a "distinguished panel of food writers, bloggers, and critics from coast to coast" was responsible for coming up with these entries, it still poses the same question that last week's Food & Wine list did: Exactly who are these bloggers and critics in Houston?
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