Photo by Robb Walsh

The Kitchen Table, a cookbook by Brennan’s of Houston chef Randy Evans, has a lot of local recipes in it, including Texas peach and fig preserves. Whole Foods has Texas peaches and fresh figs on hand right now, and so do some of the farmers’ markets. But they won’t be around much longer. Labor Day is the traditional end of the Texas peach season. Figs are usually gone by mid-September. If you put up some preserves over Labor Day weekend, you can enjoy the flavor of Texas peaches and figs all year long.

Photo by Robb Walsh

This quick and easy Indian yogurt drink is ideal for the end of summer when sweet, juicy Texas peaches are arriving at the farmers' markets straight from the Hill Country. This drink is quite versatile -- it can be served for breakfast, along with appetizers, as a dessert, or anytime you get thirsty on a hot day.

The Shipley Do-Nut company and its president today received a stern slap as both pleaded guilty in federal court to charges related to employing and housing illegal immigrants.

Lawrence Shipley III, who took the helm of his family’s Houston-based company in 2005, pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of continuing to employ undocumented immigrants. He was sentenced to 6 months of probation and was ordered to pay a $6,000 fine, U.S. Attorney Donald DeGabrielle announced today.

The company, DeGabrielle said, has agreed to plead guilty to a felony conspiracy charge, serve one year of probation and revise its immigration compliance program.

“I would hope that other businesses that are currently employing people here illegally,” DeGabrielle said, “they would look to this and say that we are serious about not only enforcing our efforts at the border … [but] that those who are serving as a magnet to draw people here realize that they are literally risking their liberty as well.”

Clarence Pierson, whose outstanding smoked pork is featured in this week's Cafe review, pulls a brisket out of his bank safe-shaped pit.

Pierson & Company's smoker was built by one of Houston's most famous custom barbecue pit builders, BBQ Pits by Klose (2216 W. 34th Street, 800-487-7487).

These are the guys who built the world's largest barbecue smoker, the smoker that looks like a Continental jet, the smoker that looks like a beer bottle, and countless other outrageous rigs. There are photos of their pits on the company Web site, along with a nice collection of barbecue recipes and a place to order a free catalog.

The custom smokers go for tidy sums, but the simplest Klose smokers start at $69. -- Robb Walsh

This week's review of Pierson & Company put me in a BBQ state of mind.

It's my theory that the greatest barbecue in Texas is being served at some out-of-the-way barbecue joint that has yet to be discovered. Which is why I like to stop at barbecue trailers and those here-today, gone-tomorrow shade tree stands with hand-painted signs that pop up on summer weekends. That's also why I tend to fill up at gas stations that sell brisket sandwiches along with the unleaded.

I am always on the look-out for barbecue signs -- the weirder, the better. Here are some classics. -- Robb Walsh

I only learned about the torta ahogada recently. It came up in a conversation about a special type of Guadalajaran bread called birote or bolillo salado that has a higher salt content and a thick crunchy crust. The sandwich gets its name because it’s dipped in a spicy sauce made with chile de arbol, vinegar, garlic and oregano.

I set out to find such a sandwich here in Houston. I tried taquerias with "Jalisco" or "Guadalajara" in their names. I cruised up Bellaire and Long Point. Even Airline.

If there is one field of artistic endeavor in which Houston undoubtedly already excels on a level that can be called without hyperbole “world-class,” it is the culinary arts. By all accounts, this is a great eating town, a place where you can find great food from a multitude of cuisines in every price range, from budget to someone else’s money.

Evidently, Houston has always been like that. Maybe not as a restaurant town, like it is today, but at least as a food town.

Harper’s – the fanciest of the fancy-pants New York mags -- has thrown open the entirety of its 158-year archives for subscribers, and I recently found an article on the subject written by one Lee Cohen Harby. She was quite taken with Houston’s food, not to mention the controlled chaos of a Saturday evening in Market Square and it’s multi-ethnic stewpot of blacks, Latins, Asians, white Americans, and various Europeans, all offering up foodstuffs and trinkets from their native lands.

While it sounds like a trip to the Bellaire Fiesta and the wholesale shops on Harwin Avenue, the thing is, Harby was describing the Houston of 1890.

Where: Pat and Joe’s Bellaire Broiler Burger, 5216 Bellaire Blvd., 713-668-8171

What $7 gets you: A great meal for pocket change.

I opted for the #3, a flame-broiled hamburger with mustard, onion, pickles, lettuce and tomatoes ($3.80). Add a side of crinkly cut fries ($2) and a small soda ($.80) for a total of $6.60.

Recommended: Yes. The “flame-broiled” tag is true. From our seats in the dining room, we could see the flames shooting in the air every time a patty was added to the grill. (It was sort of like a poor man’s light show.) It makes for a down-home, clean taste.

Anyone? Anyone? -- Jay Francis

Here’s a bacon cheeseburger from the new Five Guys Burger & Fries chain location at 24004 Southwest Freeway in Rosenberg.

I got mine with mustard, mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles and jalapeños and paid $5.59.

The standard issue burger at Five Guys Burgers & Fries is a double patty sandwich for $4.39 -- a single patty version is called a “little burger” and it goes for $3.19. The patties weigh a little under a quarter pound.

Here we have two pretty ladies, two Tex-Mex icons, two chances for you to guess. -- Robb Walsh

Soup dumplings from Fu Fu Cafe were one of the best snacks I ate while watching the Beijing Olympics. When I stopped into Dun Huang Plaza at Bellaire and Beltway 8 for take-out, I noticed that the center had set up a big screen television set and a bunch of chairs outside on the sidewalk. On the Chinese station it seemed like the table tennis competition was on all the time. I guess television crews from all over the world choose to cover the sports that are most likely to inspire national pride. And that’s why we have to watch so much beach volleyball. But no matter what event I watched during the Bejing games, I found myself craving Chinese food.

We scanned the Houston Department of Health and Human Services reports from August 11 to August 19 and found these places among the offenders.

The School of Culinary Arts (1900 Yorktown) seems to have a hairy bunch of students. During an August 19 inspection, its kitchen 405 was cited for “Food employee facial hair that is not groomed and trimmed while handling food and utensils.” Kitchen 402 got “Food employee facial hair that is not groomed and trimmed while handling food and utensils.” Kitchen 404 got cited for “Food employee facial hair that is not groomed” blah blah and multiuse equipment not maintained in good repair. Kitchen 401 had the same unruly facial hair citation (do you think it was just one guy wandering from kitchen to kitchen?) along with using towels to dry equipment and food equipment not kept clean of crusted grease (yuck). The deli was cited for (get this) a “Food employee with partial or complete absence of scalp hair not wearing effective hair restraints.” Kitchen 403 was cited for an ice crusher that wasn’t maintained in clean condition. The school’s restaurant kitchen had a failure to store maintenance and cleaning tools properly.

In anticipation of the upcoming release of St. Arnold’s Divine Reserve number seven, I participated in a vertical tasting of the six previous St. Arnold’s Divine Reserves yesterday. And what a wild ride it was. These quirky beers were manufactured as a creative outlet for St. Arnold’s brewers without much regard for marketing. They are brewed once and then the recipe is retired.

Only 325 cases of Divine Reserve number one, a hazy unfiltered barleywine with remarkable chocolate-like aromas, were released in 2005. Spec’s Warehouse went through its entire inventory in 20 minutes. The beer settled during aging and is now crystal clear, drinking beautifully.

Sunday was a good day for food exploring. Gasoline was down to $3.45 a gallon and I decided to venture down 290 between 610 and Beltway 8. I passed the Crazy Cajun restaurant but didn’t stop (maybe some other time) and that got me to thinking about how comfortable these descendants of Acadia are with their stereotyping. Can you imagine the backlash if someone named a restaurant The Raging African-American, The Crazy Chinese Guy or the Raving Mexican? Yep, gotta love those Cajuns.

At any rate, I ended up at a little Mexican place called Perico’s Mexican Restaurant (2701 Mangum 713-688-3104). It’s often a good sign if you see a rack outside with copies of La Subasta (or am I stereotyping?). And there were a lot of Hispanic families dining inside. The walls were decorated with vintage kitchenware (and a remarkable pig) that helped give the restaurant a nice, lived-in feel.