You choose the winner
Houston restaurants face off in a Final Four challenge
College basketball players aren't the only ones facing off for supremacy when the NCAA Final Four comes to town April 2-4.
Houston restaurants are also in competition, with 32 of the city's best eateries participating in their own bracket challenge — and you decide the winner.
concert series at Discovery Green will feature free entertainment and A-list musical acts throughout the Final Four weekend, and the winner of The Big Dance Restaurant Challenge will serve food during the concert as well as eternal bragging rights.
"Houston is so well-known for its restaurant scene so we had an idea to get everyone together," says Rachel Quan, the vice president of external operations for the 2011 NCAA Men’s Final Four Houston local organizing committee. "The Big Dance is going to have typical festival food but we really wanted to round it out with local flavor. We've heard ideas from crab cakes to special desserts, so it's a really neat opportunity to do something that isn't the standard fare."
Which Mexican favorite will prevail, Hugo's or Original Ninfa's?
Do you want to get your drink on at Hearsay or The Tasting Room?
Will carnivores choose Del Frisco's or Rainbow Lodge?
Can the queso at Taco Milagro match the fries from Niko Niko's?
Only the bracket can tell.
"The restaurant committee really wanted a good selection of different types of food. So if you look at the participating restaurants, you've got hotel restaurants, you've got small restaurants with only one location, and there are national chains represented too. There's Tex-Mex, Asian, barbecue, really showing of the different flavors of Houston," says Quan.
"I knew restaurants would be excited but I was stunned by the reaction. I knew it wouldn't be a challenge to get our great family restaurants to participate, but we've also got places like some of Houston's top steakhouses," says Mike Shine, the president of the Texas Food Group and former president of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association. "And the menus these guys are preparing if they win are unbelievable, like shrimp and grits, small steak items.... We want the fans to share in our culture and walk away saying 'Wow.'"
Fans can log on to culturemap.com/challenge to vote for their favorites starting today. Vote for all match-ups in each round as often as once per day and support your favorites as they advance towards the finals — you can even sign up for e-mail reminders when a new round commences every few days.
There will be five rounds of voting over the next month. Each week the field with be narrowed until only one restaurant is crowned champion. Here's the voting schedule:
Round 1 (32 restaurants): Vote today through Feb 15 at 8:59 a.m.
Round 2 (16 restaurants): Vote Feb. 15 at 9 a.m. — Feb. 21 at 2:59 p.m.
Round 3 (8 restaurants): Vote Feb. 21 at 3 p.m. — Feb. 26 at 2:59 p.m.
Round 4 (4 restaurants): Vote Feb. 26 at 3 p.m. — March 3 at 2:59 p.m.
Round 5 (2 restaurants): Vote March 3 at 3 p.m. — March 8 at 3 p.m.
In addition to the winner chosen by voters, three more restaurants from the elite eight will be selected by a panel of judges to participate in The Big Dance concert series.
But according to Shine, the Restaurant Challenge bracket is only one part of Houston's push to get the breadth of our cuisine some attention.
"The NCAA always gets with the convention bureaus of a city and gets four restaurants to endorse, and they're all downtown in most of those cities. We have three different zones, and 12 fan gathering locations. The bracket is just more exposure to bring to us and the nearly 100 participating restaurants, mirroring the basketball bracket and ramping up the excitement before the Final Four."
