Travel + Leisure, the glossy travel title that encourages readers to anchor down in Amsterdam, escape to the Cape and luxuriate in Italy -- Santorini-style, has just released its America's Favorite Cities issue -- and the results, based on 60,000 votes, from residents and visitors alike, are in.
While Denver cleaned up in the public park, environmentally friendly, cleanest city, family vacation, airport design and active/athletic residents categories, apparently our ethnic food scene well and truly sucks, because of the thirty cities that are ranked in that category, guess where we landed? We got stuck with the number 27 spot, which means there are exactly three cities -- St. Louis, Dallas and Nashville -- that did worse than us.
Seriously? Are you kidding me? No, really? Are you kidding me? If you're not seething right about now, you should be, because if that's not bullshit, I don't know what the hell is.
And that, people, is just the short list. I've been to most of the cities that ranked above Denver -- metropolises like Seattle, for example, which came in at a respectable seventeen, and tiny Santa Fe, that placed ninth (no, really, ninth) -- and Denver's ethnic food climate is far better than both. Hell, I couldn't find a decent bowl of pho anywhere in Seattle and their Mexican street food is at least a hundred tacos short of what it is here. And while I love the New Mexican food in Santa Fe, its overall ethnic food scene is lame.
It's nearly lunchtime, and I'm heading to Federal Boulevard, arguably one of the best stretches of asphalt in the country for ethnic food.
If you're interested in seeing how Denver prospered (or failed) in other restaurant categories, go to www.travelandleisure.com/afc/2009/city/denver/. And when you're done dropping your jaw, weigh in below with your comments.