This is the only food website you'll ever need

Richardsoneats.com provides a diverse, delicious restaurant list curated by a local for Comets looking for nearby eateries

BEN NGUYEN Managing Editor

If you had to recommend places to eat around Richardson to a friend, what would you send to them? A texted list? A spreadsheet? How about an entire website?

That’s what UX designer Stephen Edmonson did when he heard one of his friends was moving to Richardson.

Simply called richardsoneats.com, the website has a simple layout of clickable squares with restaurant names and summaries, which directly linked to the google maps link to the restaurant location. He had previously built out D Magazine’s directory of food and beverage, and alongside writing reviews for a D Magazine food blog called the Side Dish was friends with the publication’s food critics.

“I’ve always been interested in that sort of stuff. So it’s kind of been something that I’m not necessarily new to,” Edmondson said. “At the same time I was playing around with some of the technology that I was using on that page. I wanted to get more familiar with flexbox, which is what I used for the front end development of it.”

At the time of interview, the contact form was broken, but Edmondson has since fixed the bug. With that form, and other locals reaching out on social media after he posted it in various Richardson groups, he’s been updating the site for four years.

“It just kind of came together as a perfect storm. I was like, ‘Hey, let’s just throw this together. And it’s something I often do in terms of just, people ask me for recommendations cause they know I’m into food. And so it seemed like a fun little project and I’ve maintained it ever since,” Edmondson said.

The list contains a variety of places with different cuisines and origins, from familiar chains like Torchy’s Tacos to more local favorites like Jeng Chi and Ricky’s Hot Chicken. These choices are by design, and when he put together the list for his friend all those years ago, he wanted to highlight the diversity of foods on offer.

“One of the reasons we moved to Richardson in the beginning was just, it’s a really great melting pot of all these different cultures. That’s often expressed through the restaurants here. You know, there are other areas of DFW that have, you know, blown up in terms of like certain types of Asian food or Mexican food. But I feel like Richardson is, an interesting [place], we've got middle Eastern, we've got all different types of Asian. Um, you know, we've got all these different ethnic foods that are available to us and that's one of the things that drew us here. And so, uh, it just kind of made sense to, to have fun with it, with the website,” Edmondson.

If you want to check out the list, suggest a new restaurant to the list, or let Edmondson know that a place is closed, you can check out the website at richardsoneats.com and use the contact form embedded into the page. In the meantime, you can use it like Edmondson does, as a quick and easy way to tell people what’s good to eat.

“Anytime somebody asks for a recommendation, “Oh, by the way, here’s this website!”” Edmondson said. “It’s just kind of been a fun little side project, and that’s kind of the origin story of it.”

“So, many people are into the same thing and we all like to learn from each other,” Breen said. “The social aspect is really chill because everyone that you meet who skateboards is open. It doesn’t matter what your background is, everyone is there hanging out because they like to skateboard. We don’t care about your major, or race, or gender or whatever boxes people want to put you in- we’ll skate with you anyways. The only thing at hand is hanging out with your homies and having a good time.”

Rob Cahill, co-founder of the 4DWN Project – a skateboarding nonprofit based in South Dallas –and a first-generation streetskater, describes skateboarding as an inherently “alternative and out there” activity, accepting of all “weirdos.” Many of the features that attracted Breen to skateboarding, such as freedom, community and inclusivity are traits that Cahill said are ingrained in not only the Dallas skate community, but the nature of skateboarding itself.

“’Normal’ people – the police and most people that were better well-off, generally weren’t fond of street skaters,” Cahill said. “[Street] skating emerged as a way of rebellion against skate parks becoming inaccessible – it was born as this rebellious thing, and it continues to become even more and more rebellious. It’s inherently an ingenuity, bent on being progressive, freer and open to anyone.”

Even with skate culture’s intrinsically rebellious, progressive nature, Cahill acknowledges the obstacles it had to overcome in order to become a real community.

“One of the negative stereotypes of skaters … is that we’re a homogenous group of kind of stand-offish people that keep to ourselves, and it makes sense,”

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