Why this site exists
Search "best barbecue in Dallas" and you get twenty pages that all say the same six things. Most of them were assembled by somebody who has never set foot in Texas, working from a scraped review feed, padded out to hit a word count.
We started The Very Best of Texas because we kept running into that problem ourselves. We wanted a short, honest list: five to ten places, what each one is actually good at, what it costs, and a reason to believe the recommendation. Then we wanted the same thing for wedding venues, roofers, swimming holes, and coffee shops, in every town in the state, not just the four big ones.
What we actually do
Every guide starts with research, not a template. We pull from the businesses' own sites, local newspapers and city magazines, tourism boards, chamber listings, and current public reviews. We check that a place is still open and still doing the thing it is known for. Then we write the list and link the sources at the bottom so you can check our work.
We publish about three new guides a day. Every one is dated, and every one gets corrected when a reader tells us something has changed.
What we do not do: invent quotes, invent awards, invent statistics, or run a list we would not hand to a friend who asked. If we have not been able to verify something, we leave it out rather than guess.
Who we are
The Very Best of Texas is published by Hello Web Designs, a Texas web design studio based in Paris, Texas. That connection matters and we do not hide it: some of the businesses we write about are web design clients of ours.
When a business on one of our lists is a client, we label it as a partner right there in the article, in a gold banner you cannot miss. Being a client does not buy a spot on a list. It buys a label. Read how we rank for the full policy, and the disclosure page for everything else about how this site makes money.
Corrections and tips
Prices move. Restaurants close. Chefs leave. If a guide is out of date, or we missed somewhere obvious, tell us and we will fix it. Corrections get made the same week.
Own a business you think belongs on one of our lists? Submit it here. It is free, and a submission is not a purchase.