Food:

In no other city in the country do people eat out so often as they do in Houston. And although Houston has literally thousands of restaurants of every type, the city’s cuisine is best known as Cajun and Asian. The Cajun food (which often comes with Creole flair as well) is very varied, and if it maybe isn’t quite as rawly authentic as the food in Beaumont, the Cajun population in Houston is still pretty significant. Everything from fried rabbit to jalepeno cornbread is here, and seafood is a consistent theme.

Houston is the only Texan city with a Chinatown, although it’s really more of a “Little Saigon” as the Asian population is predominantly Vietnamese. Asian restaurants tend to be excellent, if the less expensive and touristy ones may be the ones to check out. Tex-Mex and barbecue are other popular types of food.

Music:

Houston is a blues scene, certainly a rhythm and blues scene at that. But this is also one of the birthplaces of zydeco, that ever-changing, fast-paced Creole folk music, or, rather, that synthesis of Creole music, Cajun, and traditional African-American styles. It’s a little bluesy, a little jazzy, a little bayou, a little bit of everything. Perhaps curiously, the best place in Houston to hear zydeco is not at one of your usual music venues, but rather at Catholic church dances.

The other big music style in Houston is actually hip-hop, and Houston’s hip-hop is a style all its own. It’s an experimental hip-hop, slow of tempo, chopped up and remixed together, and rather psychedelic.