Best food cities

Austin nabs top 10 spot on this list of best foodie cities in America

Counter Cafe East Austin restaurants steak and eggs breakfast

The high concentration of affordable, highly rated restaurants like Counter Cafe help make Austin the No. 7 foodie city in America.

Counter Cafe East/Facebook

What makes a great foodie city? Hint: It’s not a proliferation of fancy restaurants, nor is it the number of times Food Network has blown through town. According to a WalletHub study naming 2017’s best foodie cities in America, it’s a mix of accessibility, affordability, and quality.

The study compared 24 sets of data for 182 American cities to determine the rankings, taking a holistic approach in defining “foodie.” To the authors, a foodie isn’t just interested in trying out the hottest restaurants, but is also keenly interested in learning more about the food he or she consumes — in other words, someone whose food obsession is a lot more comprehensive than a fandom for Chopped.

To capture that dynamic, the authors looked at some unexpected data. The affordability of meals — from groceryand restaurant meal costs to taxes — weighed into the final score, as did the ratio of full-service restaurants to fast-food joints and the number of restaurants and various specialty food businesses per capita. Although cities traditionally known for their culinary scenes, such as San Francisco (the top spot), New York, and Los Angeles, ranked predictably high on the list, three Texas cities made it to the top 25.

Austin fared best in the study, coming in at seventh place. The Capital City scored high on several metrics, including average beer and wine price (36th in the nation), gourmet specialty food stores per capita (27th), and restaurants per capita (20th).Austin was especially notable for being first in affordability and accessibility of highly rated restaurants, defined by the study as restaurants that average 4.5 stars or above on ratings sites.

Houston came in next at No. 16, scoring high on grocery stores and food trucks per capita, as well as placing 15th on overall restaurants per capita — the highest restaurant density of any Texas city.

Affordability played a big role in shooting San Antonio to the top of the list. The 25th best foodie city in the U.S. had the second lowest average cost for a restaurant meal and the lowest cost of groceries in the nation (Laredo, Corpus Christi, and Brownsville were also in the top five).

Other Texas cities showed a little more poorly. Only Dallas (36), Fort Worth (66), and El Paso (87) cracked the top 100. Garland (150) and Grand Prairie (169) were in the bottom rung.

lists

Whoops

Michelin goofs on a few restaurants honored in first Texas guide

Kau Ba/Facebook

Houston's Kau Ba has been removed from the Michelin Guide.

Texans' reactions to the first Michelin Guide in the state have ranged from glowing to unimpressed, but a few notable mix-ups are more concrete than differences in taste. The November 11 ceremony honored more than 100 restaurants across the state, but at least two were in error. In Dallas the guide confused two restaurants with each other, and in Houston one of them had closed.

Starting in Dallas: The Guide's release announcing the list of restaurants who'd won awards included The Charles, an award-winning Italian restaurant in Dallas' Design District, as one of 57 restaurants that earned a "Recommended" rating.

The Charles is a surely deserving restaurant that opened in 2018, the first concept from acclaimed food & beverage group Duro Hospitality, which has since gone on to open other restaurants such as El Carlos Elegante, Sister, and Cafe Duro.

But the Guide got the wrong Charles: The real recipient was Mister Charles, a sibling Duro Hospitality restaurant that opened at 3219 Knox St. in early 2024.

The Charles specializes in Italian and Texas-inspired dishes.

Mister Charles features French and Italian-influenced dishes.

It wasn't just an incorrect name; it listed the accompanying (incorrect) address.

A spokesperson for Michelin Guide verified that Mister Charles was the winner and said that the listing of The Charles was a mistake.

“This was an internal error caused by our geolocation process. The problem will be corrected in the most expeditious manner,” the spokesperson said. The Guide website has since updated the list and replaced The Charles with Mister Charles.

Having a difference of opinion about a critic's choices is one thing — but having an error of this magnitude is something else entirely.

And blaming "geolocation" as the source of the error is a curious excuse. Geolocation refers to the ability to track the whereabouts of an electronic device using GPS, cell phone towers, WiFi access points or a combination of these.

The Houston mix-up was also disappointing, but only involved one restaurant: In a press release issued Thursday, November 14, the Guide announced that it had removed Montrose Vietnamese restaurant Kau Ba from the list of Bib Gourmand recipients.

The reason: "Upon further investigation, our team has discovered the restaurant has been permanently closed since our Inspection team's visits occurred," the statement reads.

As has been widely noted in local media, Kau Ba closed earlier this month. The restaurant’s Instagram account now belongs to Alora, which is described as “a fresh Peruvian-Vietnamese fusion concept inspired by travels to Saigon.” It is expected to open soon.

Open since 2018, Kau Ba served an innovative take on Vietnamese fare created by Nikki Tran. The restaurant built on the notoriety Tran had achieved after being featured in two Netflix series: Somebody Feed Phil and Ugly Delicious. It earned considerable acclaim, including a spot in the Houston Chronicle’s top 100 restaurants as recently as 2023 and a nomination for Best Neighborhood Restaurant in the 2021 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards.

The restaurant went through a number of iterations during its tenure. For three-and-a-half years, Tran partnered with Aya Sushi owners Minette Corpuz and Bruce Kish to oversee operations, but they parted ways in February 2023.

In an email sent to Houston Public Media, Tran expressed regret over Michelin's decision.

“But we understand and respect Michelin’s decision to remove Kau Ba from its selection,” Tran said to HPM. “Exercising an abundance of caution from a legal position, I am not able currently to share further details of our situation but I do hope to follow up soon with more information.”

“Until then, on behalf of the entire Kau Ba team, we want to thank the entire culinary community for the recognition and support,” Tran added. “Kau Ba is proud of the dishes we created and look forward to sharing very soon what’s next.”

Thankfully in Austin, things seem to be going okay. The capital city swept the competition with seven stars (one more than Houston now that the change has been made), and two green stars for sustainability — in fact, the only green stars in the state.

Austin also had four of the first-ever barbecue restaurants to be awarded stars. Houston also had one.

Austin's winning restaurants were Barley Swine, Craft Omakase, Hestia, Olamaie, InterStellar BBQ, John Bates, La Barbecue, Alison Clem, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue.

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