This Week In Food Blogs: Subterranean Sushi and Pizzitola's Pits

By Katharine Shilcutt Wed., Jul. 18 2012 at 6:00 AM

Categories: Leftovers

Photo by B. Tse

Fresh pita bread floats down a conveyor belt at Phoenicia, courtesy of our Flickr pool.

Swamplot: Craft beer lovers are about to have a whole lot more to love in Houston, reports real estate blog Swamplot. Premium Draught will be moving into the old Kaboom Books space next to Antidote Coffee in the Heights, while Cottonwood Bar will be moving in down the block from Shepherd Park Draught House in Garden Oaks.

Houston Chronicle: Speaking of craft beer, the Chron's business-and-beer reporter Ronnie Crocker informs us that Karbach beer will be available at Houston Texans games this fall as a result of the Houston brewery's recent distribution agreement with Silver Eagle.

Dude, You Going To Eat That?: Illustrating the difference between a poor experience at a restaurant with good front-of-house service and a poor experience at a restaurant with abjectly terrible front-of-house service, Dr. Ricky shows why it's so important that the front line of your restaurant -- the servers and managers -- keeps its cool at all times. Even if the food and drink are poor, good service (and a sincere apology) will almost always ensure that a guest will give your restaurant another visit. Poor service, or -- in this case -- embarrassingly rude service, will almost always ensure that your guest puts you on blast in front of the entire Internet. We're looking at you, Yard House.

Eater Houston: In advance of its July 24 appearance on the Cooking Channel show Road Trip with G. Garvin, Pizzitola's Bar-B-Cue invited Eater writer Rachel Brill to spend a day on the line with pitmaster David Reynosa. "Maintaining the proper temperature is a delicate art," she writes, "but David's title doesn't have the word 'master' in it for nothing."

Hank On Food: Hank recently visited Arpi's Phoenicia Deli, the restaurant companion to Phoenicia Specialty Foods, and gave the cafeteria-style setup A's across the board. He cited the something-for-everybody selection of food as well as the excellent cardamom and Turkish coffee gelato (my personal favorite from Arpi's, too) as big pluses in his gradebook.

Arbitrary Criticism: As we know far too well around here, it's tough to find good food in the downtown tunnels. Catherine stumbled across How Do You Roll recently and found -- like our own Nick Hall -- that it's actually a very viable option when you're dining subterranean-style.

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