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Food

'Texas is having its national food moment' and is No. 1 in the U.S., says national pub

If you love Texas, you're really going to love this. In a list of All 50 States, Ranked By Their Food, Thrillist picked Texas first. We can hear the cheerleaders out there shouting, "We're No. 1!"

Condolences to No. 50, West Virginia.

It's been an up and down year for Dallas when national publications put the spotlight on our state. A recent study rated Dallas as the No. 31 food city in the country, well behind Austin, Houston and San Antonio. But GQ magazine wrote that Dallas is the "next best new food city" in the U.S. a few months earlier.

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These lists aren't the end all, be all, of course, but they do paint a broad picture that out-of-towners might hang on to.

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Or with:

So let's bite into this one.

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The Thrillist story compliments Texas as a diverse state, but then generalizes: "Normally you wouldn't think of Texas on the whole as a place where diverse populations intersect, but rather a place where folks wearing big belt buckles meet folks wearing BIGGER belt buckles to buy American-made trucks to drive to high school football games."

OK. The cowboy thing. We get it. I rode my horse here, too.

The accolades are there, though: The article says Texas has barbecue that's "the best in the world," and great Tex-Mex.

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(Speaking of Tex-Mex, Dallas restaurant El Fenix just celebrated 100 years.)

Dallas' role has been the "perfection of the meat-centric steakhouse and hybrid, modern steakhouse," the Thrillist story says. Houston is noted for its mix of cultures and cuisines; San Antonio brought us puffy tacos and has good food halls; and Austin is "the most non-Texan place in Texas," with great chefs, barbecue, breakfast tacos and food trucks.

The story finishes: "All of this is to say: Texas is having its national food moment, and it may be time to get a bigger belt to go along with that buckle."

That suggests Texans need another reason to love Texas, and they don't. But it still feels good.