America’s Worst Cities for Food Lovers

[TexasTowelie]

Some cities are so synonymous with food that they have dishes named after them: New York Cheesecake, Boston Cream Pie, Philly Cheesesteak, Los Angeles Linguini. Okay, maybe that last one isn’t real, but the fact that there are some great cities for foodies in the U.S. is totally indisputable. But for every perfectly made crepe, there’s a soggy pancake; a deflated souffle; a burnt grilled cheese sandwich. This post is about those cities where food is definitely an afterthought—the country’s dead zones of cuisine, where it’s tough to be a foodie.

Firing up our food processor, the Movoto Real Estate blog crew tossed in a bevy of dining-related criteria to create a ranking of the country’s least appetizing cities. That is, ones with a limited range of dining options, and thus ways to tantalize your tastebuds. Topping the list was San Bernardino, CA. As we’ll explain over the course of this post, there’s a good reason no one’s made a “Top Chef: San Bernardino”—or a food show about any of the other cities in our top 10, either. They include:

1. San Bernardino, CA
2. Garland, TX
3. North Las Vegas, NV
4. El Paso, TX
5. Laredo, TX
6. Fort Worth, TX
7. St. Petersburg, FL
8. Corpus Christi, TX
9. Detroit, MI
10. Chesapeake, VA

So, how did the center of the Inland Empire end up so unappetizing? And why are there so many cities in Texas on this list? Put on your chef’s apron and join us as we break down our recipe below.

How We Cooked This Up

You can look at our Big Deal Lists kind of like a menu at a restaurant. You’ve just had the appetizer, and next we’re going to serve up the main course. Like any gourmet meal, it’s made up of several dishes; in this case, these are our ranking criteria. In order to prepare this ranking for you, we looked at the 100 most populous cities in the U.S. based on these nine criteria:

Restaurants per capita
Bakeries per capita
Food Trucks per capita
Ice Cream Shops per capita
Candy Shops per capita
Food and Wine Festivals per capita
Caterers per capita
Gourmet Grocery Stores per capita

More at http://www.movoto.com/blog/top-ten/worst-cities-for-food-lovers/ .

[font color=green]Texas takes five of the worst ten spots in the country.[/font]

[longship]

1. How about the Good Humor index?

How many ice cream trucks per capita?

Sad! My home town is on the list at #9, Detroit. Probably #1 worst on the ice cream truck scale. Still, I remember their jing-a-ling as they made it down our street in my youth.

And the best Greek restaurant in the Western Hemisphere is sadly gone, The New Hellas, as is the rest of Detroit's formerly wonderful Greektown culture.

[Populist_Prole]

2. I dunno, their criteria seems a bit too "by the numbers" IMO

Too much of a throwing away the baby with the bath water. Though I constantly butt heads withe the type of people that stubbornly cling to steadfast meat & potatoes diets, and ignorant avoiders of anything other than chain eateries, they are too fluid and spread out to pin on any one city. It's like trying to nail down a blob of mercury.

[Eleanors38]

4. Big problem is when the Interstate system spread it fostered fast food,

such that now very few locally-owned eateries locate their. Now, it's just clean well-lit fastcrap.

Some of the old local truck stops held out, but they'e all dried up. Sometimes I'll drive off the Inters and swing into a down town and ask a pedestrian: Partner, where's a good diner? And I have some success.

[Populist_Prole]

5. Agreed

The "FoodCo" corporatization has blurred differences between regions. Add to that the "stepford kids" that were born and raised in sprawl suburbia that know, and never knew, nothing BUT the familiar corporate food chain garbage....AND....want nothing BUT that. It's a disease that affects even food-rich , cosmopolitan metro areas. Such is the power of advertising.

[Eleanors38]

3. Live in Austin, Tx. Good, varied, inexpensive here.

Bouldin Creek Cafe is great.