Houston Food Blog

​Jeff Lewis's business card says his food aims for urban, chic and sleek.

But the co-owner and executive chef of Little Blackbox Company isn't above frying up a down-home dish for friends.

Sunday night a crowd of about 50 gathered on the front steps of the Elder Street Artist Lofts to munch some fish, suck down a few Coronas, stare at the skyline across I-45 and groove to DJ JaeKim Stackcache, who set up in the lobby.

Lewis used basa, a Vietnamese deep-water catfish, for the event. He tends not to use the domestic variety because it's a dirty, oily bottom-feeder. Basa is cleaner, meatier and carries the same price tag.

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt

​It looks like the curse may have been lifted from 2303 Richmond. The location has seen many restaurants come and go over the years, some which have had achingly short lifespans. Most recently, it was the home of The Chimney (for a few short months) and before that, Saute. But its newest occupant, Yelapa Playa Mexicana, seems determined to shake that curse.

The man behind the original Berryhill Fish Tacos, Chuck Bulnes, is back in the restauranteur saddle once again with Yelapa, which is named after the resort near Puerto Vallarta and emphasizes the Jaliscan cuisine of the area. One of their best items is a tangy campechana with rock shrimp, crab claws, scallops, avocado and enormous chunks of lime and olive-laced white fish. Other ceviches lace the menu, with ingredients that hint at a much deeper cuisine than simple coastal Mexican: a Fuji apple, chorizo, grilled scallion, and litchi pickle ceviche and one with citrus, Pasilla chiles, black sesame, hibiscus and ginger.

Gazpacho "shots" with a fried squash blossom

​Of course, traditional dishes dot the compact and intelligently designed menu -- grilled red snapper and grouper a la plancha -- but it was the less traditional items that piqued our interest. Executive Chef L.J. Wiley is young by restaurant standards, but the time he spent in high-end kitchens like Morimoto and Jean-George Vongerichten's Spice Market clearly left its mark. Instead of a boring, Baja California-based menu, we were faced with adventurous yet disciplined dishes like cucumber gazpacho topped with smoked mussels, avocado oil and a slice of banana (yes, banana -- and it was good) and braised lamb shoulder with an intriguing-sounding "Mexican kimchee" (we'll have to try that next time).

The dishes we did try on our visit were nothing short of spectacular, though.

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt

The bibimbap roll at Kubo's

​Rice, salmon, tuna, seaweed, wasabi, avocado, octopus, daikon radish, cucumber -- it seemed the food would never stop coming. Last night at Kubo's, we were faced with enough sushi to feed two sumo wrestlers. One brightly colored roll after another crossed our plates and palates as we attempted the near-impossible task of choosing a favorite from the group.

Kubo's, the veteran Japanese restaurant in Rice Village, is known for its inventive rolls and -- apparently -- so are its customers. Owner Yoichi Ueno and manager Akira Asano arranged a sushi competition for their guests, many of whom often request speciality rolls from the sushi chefs, with the goal of featuring the five best rolls as specials for the month of December. As a result, the restaurant received 60 recipes throughout October, as patrons submitted their own ideas for rolls both traditional and outlandish.

Of the 60 recipes that Kubo's received, Asano eliminated those that were deemed too close to any of the current rolls on the menu or those that used items the restaurant doesn't serve, such as escolar (the fatty tuna was banned in Japan in 1977, and Kubo's only serves food that meets Japanese standards for consumption). He also worked with the sushi chefs to tweak the recipes slightly, such as replacing the squid that was called for in one customer's "takoyaki roll" -- which should have octopus to be called "takoyaki" -- before deciding on the final 10 to present to a panel of judges.

The result was an array of wholly different rolls that ran the gamut from elegant and traditional to fusion-infused and over-the-top. The judges -- owner Ueno, Houston Sushi Club founder Carl Rosa, KTRK reporter Miya Shay and myself -- were tasked with choosing the best five from the spread.

​Stella Sola, Brian Caswell's new joint on Studewood, has been getting a hell of a lot of buzz for a place that hasn't served any food until this week. We sneaked into the soft opening courtesy of Ben, Brian's sous chef, and sampled Stella's already revamped-before-even-opening menu, which was changed due to the departure of Jason Gould.

Our table was in awe of the tripletail. Coming from a Gulf Coast seafood family ourselves, we know the ever-elusive tripletail is a Texan fisherman's brass ring - it was caught only once or twice by our fishing family. Brian even wrote about the infamous tripletail a few months back on his blog.

​On the southwest side of Baytown, sandwiched between the giant ExxonMobil Baytown Refinery and the City Hall, is a neighborhood I call "old Baytown." It's an area of older shops and houses, with what appears to be a largely Hispanic population. Market Street runs through the middle of it. I came here one Saturday morning to visit a Mexican seafood restaurant I had heard about called El Sinaloense (3002 Market St.).

Patronized by local Mexican Americans as well as blue- and white-collar workers from the surrounding refineries, El Sinaloense is known for its seafood dishes inspired by its namesake, the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Seafood cocktails -- the spicy, blood-red concoctions filled with octopus or shrimp -- are king here. Fried and grilled (a la plancha) fish is available too. But I came for the ceviche. El Sinaloense makes my favorite ceviche in the greater Houston area.

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PASADENA, Texas -- Authorities say a Houston-area woman who was burned up at her former common-law husband fried their pet goldfish and ate some of them. Pasadena police say it's a civil matter and no charges will be filed.

The seven goldfish were purchased together by the couple during happier times.

Photo by Robb Walsh

​Elouise Adams Jones, the founder of Ouisie's Table restaurant, dropped me a note in the mail recently. She had just read the account of my admission into the 15 Dozen Club at the Acme Oyster House in New Orleans. Ouisie confessed that when she was 16 years old, she ate 12 dozen oysters at the all-you-eat seafood buffet at the San Jacinto Inn. "I could have continued," she wrote. I always knew Ouisie was my kind of gal.

Photos by Robb Walsh

​Beeline snapper was $4 a pound and American red snapper was $6 a pound at the dockside seafood markets in Seabrook a few days ago. Big gulf shrimp were $3.95 a pound -- cheaper if you bought five pounds or more. The dock for Gulf shrimp boats in Seabrook is still functioning, despite the debris from hurricane Ike that litters the area.

Photos by Robb Walsh

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Eating whole lobsters gets pretty messy. And some diners who aren't veteran lobster eaters get intimidated by the claw-cracking and body-ripping thing. So I figured I needed to make a lobster dish that was easy to eat. Boulibasse was my first thought since I got a lot of top quality Spanish saffron a while back and I wanted to use it up before it dried out.

Photo by J.C. Reid

​The dog days of summer bring both good news and bad news for Houston seafood lovers. The bad news is that crawfish season traditionally ends around the 4th of July. Also, high summer is not the best time to eat raw oysters as the warmer waters of Galveston Bay tend to produce shriveled specimens which may or may not contain the potentially deadly bacteria Vibrio vulnificus.

The good news is that the warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico cause blue crabs to stir from their winter dormancy and begin mating and growing. Blue crab season traditionally runs from May through October, and summer is when blue crabs are at their peak.

In Southeast Texas, one of the most popular cooking techniques for blue crabs is to "barbecue" them. The traditional "BBQ crab" preparation is a misnomer. They are actually fried, not barbecued. Hard-shell blue crabs are cleaned, broken in half, dredged in spicy seasoning and then deep-fried in cooking oil until the shell turns red and the crab meat is tender.

BBQ crabs were invented at Granger's Restaurant in Sabine Pass in the 1940s. After that restaurant burned down, another Sabine Pass restaurant, Sartin's, began cooking its own version of BBQ crabs in the 1970s.

Photo by Robb Walsh

​It's the seafood that makes the weekend dim sum service at Fung's Kitchen special. Tender baby conch in curry, and succulent clams in black bean sauce were among the seafood delicacies available at the dim sum steam table this weekend. You have to get up from the table and walk over there with your little clipboard though, because these items never make it to the wheeled carts that crisscross the dining room. You will find cold seafood items like a cucumber and snail salad on a salad cart -- there's also an excellent Astroturf-green seaweed salad.

Live seafood including lobster, Dungeness crabs, scallops and prawns can also be ordered from the aquariums during the dim sum brunch (or at any other time). Fresh-killed seafood is a Cantonese specialty. The scallops come attached to the shells and covered with a fabulous garlic sauce. The lobster are best enjoyed with a simple scallion and ginger sauce. The live seafood items aren't cheap, but they are among the best Chinese entrees in the city.

Photo by Robb Walsh

Desperate lobster fisherman are selling cheap lobsters by the side of the road, undercutting an already weak market for the luxury seafood item, according to recent accounts. An Atlantic article, "The Mystery of Cheap Lobster Prices," explains that the crash of the Icelandic banking system and subsequent closing of Canadian packing plants is to blame for the flood of lobster that's currently hitting the market. With nowhere to unload their excess catch, lobstermen are putting too much lobster on the market, which is resulting in lower prices.

The H-E-B Store at Bunker Hill had a Father's Day special on lobster at $5.99 a pound. It's currently charging $11.99 a pound, but the lady answering the phone in the seafood department said to watch for another lobster special soon. You should also start seeing some sweet deals on lobster in Houston restaurants as the summer progresses. I plan to eat lots when the price is right.

Photo by Robb Walsh

The paella at Rioja restaurant on Kirkwood is one of the best I've ever eaten. You can get it at lunch with two tapas appetizers for $13. Paella is one of those dishes that can leave you completely indifferent or knock your socks off, depending on the skill of the cook and the quality of the ingredients. I remember taking a detour while driving in Spain to eat a definitive version of paella at a little inn. It turned out to be old-fashioned Valencian paella made of cheap white rice, vegetables, beef and snails. It was very disappointing.

Photos by Robb Walsh

The all-you-can-eat seafood dinner at the Monument Inn starts with a basket of boiled shrimp and a plate of oysters on the half shell, then continues with a basket of fried seafood. The basket is deceptive -- it's a lot deeper than it looks. There were around three dozen fried oysters under there and at least as many fried shrimp, along with a stuffed fried crab and some fried catfish.

Photo by Robb Walsh

In this week's Cafe review, we explore end-of-the-season deals on crawfish in the Little Saigon area of town with seafood dealer Jim Gossen. It's hard to believe, but when Gossen and the Landry boys introduced boiled crawfish to Houston at Don's Seafood restaurant in the 1980s, Houstonians turned up their noses. Sales were dismal. "We used as many of the uneaten crawfish as we could for garnishes at the restaurant, but we ended up throwing a lot of them away," he remembers.

Photos by J.C. Reid

Reason to celebrate

Two of the biggest annual events at Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula east of Galveston are the Texas Crab Festival and the Stingaree Music Festival. In its 24th year, the Crab Festival traditionally has occurred on Mother's Day weekend and celebrates everything culinary and cultural about those tasty Gulf Coast critters known as blue crabs. The Stingaree Music Festival, in its third year, usually has taken place in April and is the brainchild of country music singer-songwriter and Woodlands native Hayes Carll

But when Hurricane Ike all but wiped out the Bolivar Peninsula last September, the future of both festivals, not to mention the peninsula itself, was in serious jeopardy.

In stepped Carll, who spent his formative years as a musician in Crystal Beach playing at the blue-collar bars that line Highway 87, the main road that runs the length of the peninsula. Working alongside the famously eccentric, independent and determined residents of Bolivar, Carll moved his Music Festival to the end of May and combined it with the Crab Festival to create a weekend of music and crabs. The rallying cry was "Bolivar's Back!" All profits from last weekend's festival went to the Bolivar Chamber of Commerce Economic Recovery Fund.

Photos by Robb Walsh

At least half a dozen new Asian crawfish joints opened this spring. Jolynn's Crawfish on Beechnut, a few blocks West of Beltway 8, has the best prices on mudbugs I've seen. They're selling for $5 a pound at the moment, and they're available in lemon pepper and garlic butter flavors. The owner of Jolynn's is from Washington State, and she has a unique way of serving her crawfish. No matter how hot you order them, they aren't very spicy. But they come with lots of the selected flavoring, so the garlic butter crawfish really taste like delicate crawfish and garlic butter--not like pepper. Then you get several bowls of dipping sauce at the table -- one is sweet and spicy, and the other is creamy butter. Beside those you get bowls of lime wedges, salt and pepper and cayenne. So you can go crazy with the dips if you want it hot. Corn and potatoes are extra, of course.

Photos by Robb Walsh

The late Sam Segari was nuts about shrimp. His restaurant, Segari's on Shepherd, is run by his daughter now. But the shrimp dishes are still made with U-10s, the largest Gulf shrimp available. The cryptic code means "under ten to a pound" -- the actual average size is close to a fifth of a pound each. I tried some boiled in a shrimp cocktail and some fried with onion rings for lunch the other day. The beautifully cooked boiled shrimp came with some huge crab "lollipop" claws in an old-fashioned ketchup-based cocktail sauce. The fried shrimp were so big they were flattened out before being battered and fried. They tasted like chicken-fried shrimp steaks.

Photos by Robb Walsh

Shuck Daddy's is Houston's newest oyster bar, located in the former Mak Chin's location on Shepherd just south of I-10 near the Cadillac Bar. At first I thought they called the waitresses "Half Shell Hotties," but the provocative T-shirts are supposed to promote a menu item by the same name. The four hot oyster dishes are "Cajun casino," oysters cooked with bacon, scallions and cheese; Rock-Ur-Fella, a variation on oysters Rockefeller; Fiesta, oysters with chipotle peppers; and grilled oysters with garlic butter.

Photo by Robb Walsh

"Spicy Fish" is an awesome lunch if you like hellishy hot seafood. Tilapia medallions are stir-fried with dried red peppers and slices of fresh jalapeño chile and served with steamed rice. The bottom of the plate is covered with bright orange oil, just in case the other peppers aren't spicy enough. Like all the lunch specials at Shanghai Cuisine, it's incredibly cheap -- everything is $4.88.

The restaurant is located in the shopping center on the south side of Bellaire just before Beltway 8. My friends call this the "Failsafe Center" because there are so many good restaurants in it. The list includes Juice Box, FuFu Cafe, Tofu Village, Hong Kong Dim Sum and Fruitiful Cafe, the new Shanghainese all day dim sum joint. "Shanghainese" is what people from Shanghai call themselves -- the most famous Shanghainese guy in Houston is Yao Ming.

Photo courtesy of Bayou Mama's

When Scott Sen, co-owner of the new Bayou Mama's Seafood & Oyster Bar (13165 Northwest Freeway, 713-690-6262), decided to open a new place with his brother, they had a debate. "I wanted to open a bar but my brother and partner, Mike, wanted to open a restaurant." The two came to a compromise. Half the place is a bar, and half is a restaurant. Scott calls it "a sports bar serving Cajun seafood."

"We wanted a great place to hang out and watch a game and where you can get some great seafood. We also wanted a place where you could linger after the kitchen closes and continue to have a drink at the bar - we close when the customers go home," says Scott.

Photo by Robb Walsh

PJ Stoops has a fishmonger's booth at the Bayou City Farmer's Market at 3000 Richmond most Saturday mornings. He told me he lived in Lake Jackson and made the rounds of the docks where fishing boats pull in early in the morning. He buys good-looking fish right off the boat, vacuum packs them for freshness and keeps them cold until you buy them at the farmer's market. His prices are fairly reasonable.

The morning I stopped by he had some great-looking golden tilefish and some small vermillion snapper left. I was looking for a fish to cook on the grill, so I went with the little snapper. I cut three deep slashes in each side and filled them with Cajun seasoning blend, then I put the whole fish on the grill. I cooked some onions and peppers in a cast iron skillet on the grill at the same time. Then I served the fish with fresh flour tortillas, guacamole, lettuce, tomatoes and salsa, Tampico-style.

Look around for Stoops Family Fishmonger's booth at the Bayou City Farmer's Market tomorrow morning.

Gulf shrimp season is over as of this Friday, May 15. It is scheduled to resume in mid-July.

So what does this mean?

The weather has turned warm and I have stopped eating raw oysters. But the oyster season isn't over yet. I bought a gallon of shucked oysters from Croatian oysterman Misho Ivic down in San Leon and I am cooking up a storm with them. Go buy yourself a couple of pints of shucked oysters and see for yourself. Just make sure you know what kind of oysters you are buying. Some grocery stores in Texas sell shucked Pacific oysters and some sell Gulf oysters. Pacific oysters are fine, but Gulf oysters are sweeter.

So far I've had oysters, bacon and eggs for breakfast, oyster stew for a late night snack and fried oysters on toast with remoulade for lunch. But the best thing I've cooked lately by a long shot was a big pot of New Orleans-style oyster and artichoke soup. I made it for company and they were duly impressed. I served it with crusty bread and a Trimbach Gewurtraminer chilled extra cold. I doused the soup with an extra shot of really good sherry before I put it on the table.

Here's the recipe:

Photos by J.C. Reid

Coming to a seafood platter near you

Chances are that if you eat seafood in Houston on a regular basis then Jim Gossen provides at least some of it. Gossen is the founder and CEO of Louisiana Foods, one of Houston's largest seafood distributors.

The history of Louisiana Foods reads like the recent history of the seafood business in Southeast Texas and South Louisiana. In 1972 Gossen teamed up with Billy and Floyd Landry to start the first Don's Seafood restaurant in Morgan City, Louisiana. In 1976 they opened the first Don's Seafood in Houston and in the following years opened restaurants throughout Southeast Texas and Louisiana.

As the chain grew, Gossen determined that a central kitchen was necessary to provide a consistent quality of ingredients and seafood to the restaurants. Additional Houston restaurants such as Magnolia Bar & Grill and Willie G's were added and the central kitchen became known as Creole Foods. Eventually Tilman Fertitta bought out the Landry brothers to create Landry's Restaurants, Inc. In the deal Gossen retained ownership of the Creole Foods central kitchen and rechristened it Louisiana Foods.

Photos by J.C. Reid

Welcome back, friend

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike's steamroll across the Bolivar Peninsula, before-and-after aerial photos of beach communities like Caplen and Gilchrist became iconic images of the hurricane's devastating power.

The before pictures show verdant blocks of raised-on-posts beach houses; the after pictures reveal a muddy wasteland of concrete slabs and wooden posts where the whole of the house has been cleanly sheared off and its remnants carried inland as far as Winnie and Anahuac.

For those of us who grew up in Southeast Texas and spent lazy summers on Bolivar, the devastation was particularly distressing. Bolivar is inextricably linked to our youth and the rites of passage that went with it. For many of us, summers on Bolivar represented many "firsts" -- our first time driving a car, our first drink, our first kiss, our first, well...you know.

Another first, especially as youngsters, was a steady diet of Gulf Coast seafood. Big vessels of shrimp boiling on the deck, a pot of gumbo simmering in the kitchen, a saltwater catfish caught earlier in the day at Rollover Pass grilling on the fire. And on Saturday nights we'd all take a shower, put on our best shorts and Hawaiian print shirts, slather moisturizer on to our sunburnt necks, noses and shoulders, pile in to the back of a pickup truck, and drive down to the center of seafood and social life on the peninsula -- Stingaree Marina and Restaurant.

This morning's Snackshot comes to us courtesy of aynsavoy and Farrago:

From the photographer's description:

"Cioppino at Farrago, near my office in Midtown. Snapper, tillapia, mussels, and shrimp in a tomato bell pepper stew with chipotle. I would go back just to have this again, although I think I'd eat anything on their menu.

UPDATE: I went back twice in the following two weeks, and did in fact order this again."

The sixth annual MDA Crawfish Boil and Music Festival is taking place this Saturday, April 4th starting at 4:00 p.m.

The annual event began as just a small get-together in 2004 with only 250 people in attendance and has grown to one of the city's biggest and best crawfish boils.  Over 1,000 people came out to Warehouse Live last year to enjoy all-you-can-eat crawfish, free beer and live music from some of Texas' best bands and performers.

This year's crawfish boil will once again take place at Warehouse Live.  For $35 ($40 at the door), you can dig into bottomless buckets of all-you-can-eat mudbugs and free beer from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.  All of the proceeds from the event -- which also includes a raffle and an auction -- will go to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) and Jerry's Kids.

Photos by J.C. Reid

Take me to your eater

For true seafood lovers, one of Mother Nature's greatest inventions is undoubtedly the soft-shell crab. "Softies" are one of those rare creatures that seem engineered specifically for human consumption.

For the uninitiated, a soft-shell crab is a crab that has just molted (shed) its hard shell due to the growing process. Immediately after molting, and for up to 48 hours thereafter, the "shell" of the crab is soft and skin-like. During this time the crab is extremely vulnerable to predators (especially those of the two-legged variety).