Food:

In contrast to Dallas’s more affluent, gourmet fare, Fort Worth is proud to be a cowtown and proud to serve meat and lots of it. Burgers, barbeque, and steak are staples, if sometimes with unusual variations (you can, for example, find ostrich burgers). The sides are sometimes especially good, with fries you won’t find at the local McDonald’s. Chili is also a very popular dish, as is Tex-Mex in general.

Music:

Fort Worth is country-western to the core, and some of the live music venues have been where they are for over a century. Billy Bob’s, the world’s largest honky-tonk, is so large that it can accommodate a bull ring among the dancing (and does). Even so, country isn’t always country-western . . . Eastern European traditional music has a presence, as does folk and rock.

Of course, the fantastic Bass Performance Hall, which hosts everything from opera to tributes to classic rock, is one of the hearts of Fort Worth’s music scene. And when country-western fans visit Fort Worth in October, they simply can’t miss the Red Steagall Cowboy Gathering and Western Swing Festival.