There are many dishes Houstonians will defend to the end: barbecue, steak, breakfast tacos and Tex-Mex. We're a proud city and rightfully so. It's disappointing The Daily Meal doesn't grasp this.



Shortly before midnight, the food and drink focused website released a list of the five best Tex-Mex restaurants in Houston. Austin-based Chuy's was included but the other four restaurants were rather odd choices. Making the cut, Chipotle, Taco Bell and Chili's Grill & Bar. In a city where there's a Tex-Mex restaurant on every other corner, it's hard to accept that those four selections are representative of a cuisine unique to Texas.



Turns out The Daily Meal's readers chose the casual and fast food chains in a 2013 poll. The list included: Taco Cabana, El Pollo Loco, and a few others not located in Houston. From there, The Daily Meal selected the restaurants that polled high and were located in Houston.



Still, it's hard not to place blame on The Daily Meal, which wrote "...some of the best Houston restaurants, in fact, are the local Tex-Mex chains of some of America's most popular Tex-Mex chain restaurants." Chipotle is not Tex Mex and neither is Taco Bell. And Chili's Grill & Bar? A far cry from it. Yet all three beat out Houston-based Pappasito's Cantina, a restaurant that specializes in Tex Mex. Houston has a few local Tex-Mex chains that any resident would be proud to have on any list, like El Tiempo for an example. Maybe the original list should have been called America's Best Mexican, Southwest, Tex-Mex and Mexican-Inspired Chains, a name more fitting for a roster of mix-matched cuisines.



The only question left to ask is, who was in charge of compiling The Daily Meal's Tex-Mex restaurants in the first place? Clearly, they have no clue what Tex-Mex is. Perhaps they should be made to study Houstonia's Katharine Shillcut's Houston's 15 Best Tex-Mex Restaurants. Or better yet, actually visit Houston and spend a week immersed in our vast Tex-Mex culture.