Don’t you love lists? I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what the intern at Fort Worth, Texas –– The City’s Magazine thinks the 10 best places for pizza are in Fort Worth, or the 20 hamburgers that some real estate blogger has deemed “must-try.”
OK, #realtalk: I hate lists, but I get it. It’s just click bait. The endless procession of meaningless noise that clogs up my social media feed is meant to just be a little bit of fun –– unlike the Weekly’s annual Best Of issue. We employ hundreds of food critics to go to every restaurant in the city. *wink*
Maybe I want click bait, too. I want to go viral –– and not the kind where the CDC won’t let me leave New Jersey. #ebolajoke Maybe I want a week off from integrity and hard work. I mean, surely all of those sweet, sweet unique visitors to my column will get me more money. Right?
In the spirit of making it rain clicks, here is a list I’ve compiled of five of the best-worst Fort Worth foodie lists.
1. “15 Restaurants in Fort Worth That Will Blow Your Mind” on the Motovo blog. Wow, a real estate blog checks in at No. 1! The best part of this collection is that there are no real criteria. The list consists of whatever the author has found mind-blowing. Based on some of his choices –– Pizza Snob, Happy Bowl Thai Restaurant –– it sounds like his mind was already cracked.
2. “The Best Fort Worth Patios for Eating and Drinking Al Fresco” on Culture Map Fort Worth. Culture Map has some great stuff on the local versions of its site, and it employs Teresa Gubbins and Malcolm Mayhew, both of whom I respect. But this post was engineered to be passed around on social media with various people tagging their awful friends in the comments. “OMG, we have to try all of these, Stacey.”
3. “A Cuban Sandwich Survey of DFW” on the Dallas Observer’s site. Weekly’s own Jeremy Hallock wrote this list, and he’s an excellent writer. But there’s not one Fort Worth restaurant on it. The farthest west Hallock traveled was North Richland Hills to the great Cuco’s Sandwich Shop (6650 Glenview Dr., 817-284-169). I’m picking on poor Jeremy because every time a Dallas-based outlet writes about “DFW,” it’s usually code for “Mostly Dallas with one cursory Tarrant County entry.”
4. “The 7 Saddest Restaurant Closings of the Last Year” on Fort Worth, Texas –– The City’s Magazine. FWTX is basically one big list. It’s the journalistic equivalent of a greeting card. But I’m mostly irked by this entry because it’s trespassing on my territory. As the restaurant scene’s foremost whiner, I wrote about all of these closings, but I just didn’t think to put them in list form. I thought about, y’know, writing about them.
5. “10 Essential Fort Worth Restaurants to Visit” on Fort Worth Weekly’s site. It wouldn’t be very ethical of me to towel-whip listicles without including one of my own. (I’ve done only two until now.) My maiden voyage on the choppy waters of list-making was a reaction to a blog posted on the Observer’s site about the 30 essential restaurants in Texas you should visit before you die. Only two Fort Worth places made the cut. Filled with indignation, I took to my keyboard and penned an equally inane collection of arbitrary places I like.
Hopefully the powers that be at our little rag will sell erectile dysfunction ads on my page, and I can finally move on to more serious journalistic endeavors like: “Celebrity Baby Bumps,” “Guess Which Member of ABBA Got the Fattest,” and “Who Wore it Better: Yoga Pants Edition.”
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Contact Chow, Baby at chowbaby@fwweekly.com.
