Maybe one of these days Pappas Restaurants will announce plans to put a Pappadeaux and Pappasito's complex somewhere in our town. Ideally, we'll hear the news first and a post a blog that will get 10,000 likes on Facebook and as many retweets.
That would be fantastic. But maybe not for the obvious reasons.
A couple of weeks ago, unfounded rumors that Pappas was eyeing Waco came out and caused a stir. The Waco Tribune-Herald quickly produced a story quoting the Pappas family saying there were no plans to put restaurants here. So that was that, except that I'm still having conversations about it.
On Monday night, I was chatting with local sports radio personality Paul Catalina about the Pappas story and a question occurred to me:
Why are we so obsessed with Pappadeaux and Pappasito's coming to town?
It can't be for culinary reasons alone.
Pappasito's wouldn't be the best Mexican food chain restaurant in town. I am and will remain unconvinced that it would be an improvement over Chuy's, Ninfa's and Manny's on the River.
Pappadeaux would make an impact. I won't deny that. However, I don't think anyone's local dining experience would be improved by that much. Pappadeaux is just expensive enough that most of us would reserve it for special occasions. And we have plenty of special-occasion restaurants already. How often do you dine at 135 Prime or Diamondbacks? They have seafood. And if it's Cajun you're after, well how often do you dine at Buzzard Billy's? And before you say Buzzard Billy's doesn't compare to Pappadeaux, I would challenge you to dine at both restaurants within the span of a week or so and carefully analyze the difference.
I'm arguing that the difference wouldn't be significant enough to justify how badly we want Pappas to notice us.
So if it's not a matter of the quality of dining, then it has to be status. We want people to drive down Interstate 35 and, when they get to Waco and see a Pappas complex, they say "Oh, dang, Waco has Pappadeaux and Pappasito's, maybe I've misjudged this town."
But anyone who would think that HAS misjudged us. We have quality dining here of all kinds. We have cool places to hang out and local joints that we love and a decent number of fancy places to choose from when we want to dress up and impress a date. And we have a burgeoning food truck scene that should more than vouch for out street smarts.
So let's chill out about it. I think Pappas needs us more than we need them.
One more bite: Not too long ago, I wrote a similar blog about Freebirds before they came to town. Now that they're here along with an assortment of other like places, ask yourself this question: If someone said, "Hey, do you want to go to Freebirds or Chipotle or Torchy's or Fuego?" how would you answer?
