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Food

Study: Garland and Grand Prairie are terrible places to eat

Among the 150 largest cities in the U.S., Dallas and Fort Worth are mediocre for wallet-friendly eating, says a recent WalletHub study. Our dining critic Leslie Brenner wrote about Dallas' underwhelming culinary creativity, in fact, in a story headlined What's wrong with the Dallas dining scene -- and can it be fixed?

We don't have many photos or stories about restaurants in Grand Prairie. But a search of...
We don't have many photos or stories about restaurants in Grand Prairie. But a search of Dallas Morning News archives shows that in 2002, writer Ed Housewright said of one Grand Prairie restaurant, "Beto's is a safe bet for anyone who loves Tex-Mex food." So there's that.(Sonya N. Hebert / The Dallas Morning News)

But let's not dwell on being middle of the pack. Drill almost to the bottom of WalletHub's best and worst food cities and you'll find the saddest news: Garland is No. 141 and Grand Prairie is No. 148 out of 150. The only cities on the list that are worse for grabbing a good-priced bite to eat are Moreno Valley, Calif., and North Las Vegas, N.V., this study finds.

Grand Prairie's problem, the study purports, is the small number of restaurants per capita and the scant amount of specialty-food stores. Both Grand Prairie and Garland were dinged for their low numbers of coffee shops.

According to the methodology, the aim was to find the "best and cheapest foodie scenes in the U.S." using 21 criteria on the 150 biggest cities in the country. It's a numbers game; it isn't personal. But it sure feels like it:

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Even Brownsville and Lubbock were ranked as better food cities than some of the Dallas 'burbs. Yeouch.

Among Texas' largest cities, Austin is tops, at No. 18. Houston follows, at No. 39, then San Antonio at No. 75. (Or so says the study.)

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Dallas landed almost exactly in the middle of the pack, at No. 78. Fort Worth clocked in at No. 101.

Fret not, hungry friends. Here are some notable restaurants if you're willing to look beyond Grand Prairie and Garland: