We stopped by the European-style Café Rose on the bottom floor of Hotel Sorella (800 West Sam Houston Parkway), recently opened by Alex Brennan-Martin of Brennan's, and tried a grilled hanger steak wrap and margarita panini. The food was in line with Brennan's reputation. Tender steak, caramelized onions, peppers, and mozzarella were served alongside spicy slaw, and it all tasted great. The margarita panini had prosciutto and a subtle sweetness from the piquillo mayonnaise. We also were very happy with the price point for this upper-end café fare -- $8 to $10 buys you lunch or dinner, and the coffee is reasonable if you are a fan of Illy. We aren't, but if you do order a coffee, ask for Patrick, the resident latte artist.
Fu Fu Café (9889 Bellaire Blvd) has an odd name, yes, but the food is stellar. We stand behind most anything on its menu, especially the hot pot cuisine. This time, however, we ordered a dish Fu Fu staff recommended: Pan Cake Pork. Yes, it sounds like a pork pancake, but it's more like an Asian burger or gordita. It seems crazy, and it is. Savory and hearty pork and crispy, fluffy English muffin style bread, accentuated with cilantro and chives, it makes the ultimate appetizer. There are two to an order, and we did not want to share. For a quick lunch, these pan cakes are a great idea, and they shine as the intended appetizer for the hot pots.
Built in 1902 in Old Town Spring as a hotel and saloon for railroad employees, today Wunsche Bros. Café stands emasculated by its current surroundings but holds strong to its heritage. The interior of Wunsche Bros. is still filled with hints of manlier times - of honor bars and prohibition stashes, swinging shuttered doors, old rusted Coke machines and paint-stripped wood.
When we pulled up to Hong Kong Chef (5112 Bissonnet St.), we felt like we were in a kung fu movie. As we entered the doors, which were decorated with Chinese symbols and a long dragon, it became clear this place is serious about its fast Chinese food. Yes, it is fast. They specialize in all the stuff we aren't supposed to eat, but hey, you gotta cut loose every now and then. The menu reads like a health fanatic's worst nightmare: Tso's chicken, moo goo gai pan, sha cha beef, orange chicken, house fried rice, etc.
America has harbored an infatuation with the Turducken since John Madden mentioned it in a Thanksgiving Day broadcast several years back. The mere idea of a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken brings carnivores to their knees, thanking God, Charlton Heston, and their lucky stars that someone made their dream a reality. The turducken has achieved a strange level of immortality in our imaginary culinary pantheon, despite that fact that most people have never tried one (for shame!). Much like the state of Texas, itself, the turducken is an NRA dream and a PETA nightmare.
Though a cuddly two-month-old alpaca drew some interest, the hit of Houston's first Peruvian festival, held last weekend at Heights Theatre, was a ceviche demonstration by chef Johann Schuster.
The owner of Charivari Restaurant in Midtown, Schuster whipped up three batches of the raw-fish dish, common in several South American countries, and dropped handfuls into cups for onlookers to sample.
Working with corvina, a Pacific bass, then monchong, a Hawaiian fish that's among his favorites, Schuster dropped the chopped fish into a bowl, then added Peruvian sweet onions, key lime juice, diced Fresno pepper and salt.
On a random weekday around lunchtime we stumbled upon Taqueria Huetamo II (210 Aldine Bender Rd). With only a simple black awning with the name Taqueria Huetamo II in white letters, this place is the poster child for a hole-in-the-wall restaurant.
It was clean, simple and almost empty. We were one of three small groups eating lunch, and only one more group arrived while we were eating. The friendly waitress immediately brought us each our own bowl of homemade salsa and fresh chips. This was a good sign.
In a nondescript storefront named simply "Classic Bakery" next to Wel-Farm on Highway 6 sits an unassuming Chinese bakery that serves some of the most delicious chicken pot pies I've ever tasted.
South Houston is home to one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in Houston, Sagemont. There is a dense population of Vietnamese in this area, and as a result, a fantastic selection of great Asian food. T@pioca is a little Vietnamese banh mi, yogurt, and bubble tea dive on Fuqua and Sabo that's a good example of a quality small business. The bubble tea drinks are great -- we ordered jasmine milk tea and coffee milk tea with half sugar (they will know).
We also ended up trying T@pioca's newest addition, frozen yogurt. We generally despise frozen yogurt places trying to be Pinkberry because they don't match up to the famous fro-yo chain. What we enjoyed about this yogurt was that it didn't try to be a copy. It tasted similar to Sugus, the Swiss chewy yogurt candy. Very smooth in texture and rich in flavor, this yogurt really got us thinking that fro-yo can be done better.
T@pioca was in the Sagemont community under another name, Boba-T-Licious (yes, it is a little funny), for several years and recently expanded and changed names. The last place had the same great fare but was a little rundown. First lured here by the bubble tea, and now by banh mi and yogurt as well, we're excited this place is doing things right.
If you're looking for a live-action version of Tony Stamolis's new book T&T&A here in Houston, look no further than El Tiempo.
Formerly the Pink Pussycat Cabaret, El Tiempo's closest neighbor offers free admission for those in the grips of a taco-chica love triangle.
Strangely, El Tiempo is pretty high-class as far as tacos go. The crowd is decidedly not of the strip club variety, and the menu is a little pricey even when you're not ordering your fajitas with optional lobster or quail.
Maybe that's why the girls next door felt the need to class it up a notch and change the name to the Diamond Club, but whether one establishment merely tolerates the other or they're in cahoots, it's clear from the proximity of the sign to El Tiempo's main entrance that they both know they're on to something, playing off Houston's baser instincts.
In 2007, Vasco Luti, owner of Simposio Ristorante, opened the restaurant's new location in an unlikely shopping center at the corner of Westheimer and Dunvale. Historically, this native Tuscan focused on Northern Italian cuisine, but last night, Simposio debuted some new wines and Southern Italian dishes at the first of many tastings.
Two months ago, Chef Riccardo Palazzo-Giorgio joined Simposio Ristorante as the new executive chef. A first-generation Italian-American, Palazzo-Giorgio trained at the Culinary Institute of America and has worked in both the US and Europe. His goal as the new executive chef is to showcase seasonal ingredients in both Northern- and Southern-Italian-inspired dishes.
Last night's fall tasting featured four stations pairing food and wines from Tuscany, Sicily, Piemonte and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The first station in the spacious entryway, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, served a mushroom-topped polenta cake and a cabbage roll filled with beef and risotto. The Piemonte station served a pancetta-wrapped shrimp-and-rabbit ravioli.
Sonoma on Richmond Avenue has an impressive wine selection and a wonderful menu of fruits, artisan cheeses, cured meats and gourmet entrees. It also offers a decent sangria.
Two of Sonoma's three sangria options are average. The rose sparkling sangria, however, is worth reordering. The sweeter wine gives the glass a delicious candy-like quality that isn't quite Spanish, but we aren't complaining.
Sonoma offers sangrias for $5 on Tuesdays, making it just about the only day you shouldn't show up and slide into their pillowed booths to sit and sip by tea light. Every day of the week you can find "wine therapy" specials on Sonoma's more signature items, such as gourmet pizzas, imported beers and red wine by the glass.
Back in the '70s, Hobbit Cafe's claim to fame was being the "only" vegetarian restaurant in Houston. Apparently the owners had another restaurant that served Caribbean food, and they decided to merge the two and create the carnivore-friendly cuisine we indulge in at Hobbit Cafe to this day. When offered a menu, try to determine which item came from which restaurant. We will give you a hint: If its name is out of a Middle Ages fantasy neverland, it is probably veggie-friendly.
Our favorite discovery at Hobbit Cafe turned out to be something offered with everything: Bragg Liquid Aminos, which is offered as a condiment next to ketchup and mustard. Bragg is essentially an all-natural soy sauce that has way less sodium (still a lot), plus essential amino acids for your body. It also makes the broccoli and anything else you dash it onto simply amazing. The aminos have a savory quality that can accompany any dish, but we tend to steer toward the jerk chicken when at Hobbit. The chicken's so-so, but the vegetables are high-quality.
Since we were seeing Opera in the Heights's production of the French opera Manon, we decided to pay homage by writing about another amazing French feat going on here in Houston. Café Rabelais in the Village is dear to many a European's displaced heart - it's the focal point of casual French dining in our inner city. While everything here is really top-notch, and we do mean everything, there were a few points of special interest on our recent trip.
On a trip through Meyerland recently we decided to grab some milk tea from a quaint café called Fioza (9002 Chimney Rock). This is more of a high school coffee hangout at night, but we ended up here at lunch time, and lo and behold, people were eating sandwiches. Not just regular sandwiches, these panini were packed with garden herbs, chicken, provolone and pesto, and quite delightful. Not overly cheesy and exceptional crispy, these guys could hang with our favorite flatbreads closer in the loop. We also had a simple garden salad with an insane house-made berry-balsamic vinaigrette and a slightly sweet milk tea, no tapioca (light lunch). The patrons seamed to already know what we were just figuring out.
Picnic, that cute little sandwich shop on Bissonnet by the owners of Raven Grill just two doors over, specializes in customized, to-go box lunches.
The shop has everything you need for the perfect picnic. Lettuce-free salads stock the shelves in abundance - potato salad, pasta salad, chicken salad, fruit salad and cole slaw. And there are snacks like Zapp's chips, gazpacho and cheesecake brownies.
Picnic's proprietors have thought of everything - even where to have your picnic. Given the great weather this week, we decided to put Picnic's list to the test and visit a few of its suggestions.
Mango's Café (403 Westheimer) is like your androgynous vegan little brother. He doesn't really know what or who he is and decides to be as vague as possible when surrounded by strangers. This house of mostly vegan cuisine and rock and roll almost offers some really incredible food experiences. Mango's serves terrific vegetarian fare; the green curry tofu, the triple-decker peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich aptly called the Terminator, and the Asian-influenced tofu banh mi are merely a few casual and inventive options here.
It had been a while since we'd visited Garson Persian Restaurant (2926 Hillcroft), and it had undergone a major renovation. So we decided to give it a second look. We drove into an empty parking lot about 8:30 on a Sunday night. We were one of only three small groups there.
It was a cool night so we sat outside on the renovated patio surrounded by a solid stucco wall that blocked the busy Hillcroft traffic. Except for the deafening fire truck that went by, we easily could have been in a Mediterranean hideaway with the mood lighting and fountain.
To start, the extremely attentive waitress brought us an appetizer of creamy hummus, homemade pita, fresh feta, and mast museer, which we washed down with hot tea. Forget sweeteners or cream; give me this delicious, authentic tea intravenously.
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.
Yesterday we talked about the soup at Star Snow Ice, the amazing restaurant tucked away in the corner of a plaza off Bellaire and Beltway 8; today we take on its sweet offerings. Snow ice, a common dessert in Asia, has gained in popularity here. It's served two different ways. One version comes with fresh fruit, shaved ice, condensed milk and, sometimes, salty plum syrup; the other is a savory dessert-snack hybrid consisting of various beans, egg puddings and other odd ingredients that might shock the conservative palette. We decided to go for the "mixed fruit snow ice" and were not disappointed.
Located on historic Morton Street across from Richmond City Hall, Sandy McGee's has been a small-town staple and source of Sugar Land's favorite broccoli-cheese soup since 1986. On the weekends Sandy's is filled with moms and daughters taking a break from midday antiquing, while weekdays bring suits from the courthouse down the street. What drives lines out the door regardless is Sandy's attentiveness to the way each plate is made.
Fruit is always fresh, ripe and accompanied by a sugary poppy seed sauce. Sandwiches are carefully constructed, giving the impression that the kitchen saved the best parts of everything specifically for you. There are no wilty sprouts, soapy avocados or ends of tomatoes. The free spicy butter toast melts supremely well into a rich, buttery broccoli-cheese soup, whose broccoli and carrots bits are a well-cooked, quiet afterthought. Oversize desserts such as the Mexican fudge cake, amaretto cream pie and buttermilk pecan pie can render the unsuspecting Richmond window shopper incapacitated.
Star Snow Ice (the Teriyaki is silent) on Bellaire and Beltway 8 is a popular destination of Taiwanese nationals living in Houston, and for good reason. Walking into this place feels like walking into Taipei, with Asian businessmen standing in line next to private school students and young adults who work for cell phone companies. And almost everyone is slurping down beef noodle soup.
We know Craig Hlavaty swears by the Mummy at Ray's Franks at the corner of Richey and Nance on the East End of downtown. But we stand firmly behind the deep-fried Chupacabra, a chili dog topped with goat cheese and jalapeños. Ray will make your dog any way you want it -- get it topped with jalapeño scissor sticks and curry ketchup.
Colima is a small state in western Mexico, bordering on the Pacific Ocean. You don't hear a lot about cuisine from Colima, but apparently it's well-known in Mexico and best known for its seafood, mainly grilled and fried fish, and its ceviche. In a testament to the diversity of regional cuisines in Houston, we have a restaurant called Cocina de Colima (3356 Fountain View) that specializes in food from this Mexican state.
I visited Cocina de Colima as part of a recent taco truck crawl organized by the Houston Chowhounds. Taco-wise, this joint is known for tacos al pastor and from-scratch tortillas. The restaurant itself is in a faceless strip center, with a tiny but clean dining room. The walls are covered with pictures of dishes from the menu, Mexican flags and soccer jerseys. The words "quirky" and "hole-in-the-wall" come to mind when describing Cocina de Colima.
My group ordered the obligatory tacos, but we also ordered two seafood dishes: ceviche Colima and the mojarra frita, or fried tilapia. "Mojarra" is a misnomer -- technically it's a name for a species of fish that does not include tilapia. But apparently the Spanish bastardized the name, so that the fish is informally known as "mojarra tilapia."
It's far from the Heights, miles from midtown and could never double as a nightclub. Unassuming as ever, my favorite sushi in town -- Ginza Japanese Restaurant -- makes me proud to dine in a shopping center next to Jack's Carpet.
The meal begins with hot towels and ends with sliced oranges - clearly the extracurricular work of an experienced sushi knife. A server hovers four feet from my table with ice water, and the wait staff saunter around in simple, muted kimonos.
A surprising number of people don't know what beef cheek is. Several times I've been in a fancy restaurant with "braised beef cheeks" on the menu and someone will ask, "Those are the cheeks from the rump of the cow, right?" Wrong. Beef cheek comes from the head of a cow, specifically the muscles around the jaw. All that cud chewing makes for an initially tough and sinewy cut of beef, but with the proper slow-cooking technique, it will turn fork-tender.
The idea that meat can come from the head of a cow is alien to many. But as Robb Walsh has shown, cow head is chock full of meaty, gelatin-y goodness. One of the traditional preparations of this type of meat is, of course, barbacoa de cabeza. This is the barbacoa they serve in taco truck fare. In Houston, the king of barbacoa de cabeza is Gerardo's Drive-in.
Deep in Friendswood (it isn't that far away, people) is an establishment that has ballooned into an enchilada institution. It's called La Casita (18043 County Rd. 127), and Tom Hanks ate here during the filming of Apollo 13 at Space Center Houston. It's also the local dive of a recent Bachelor contestant. Weird. Friendswood.
We had a half order of fajitas served with caramelized onions, green and red bell peppers, beef flank steak, guacamole, lettuce and pico. This dish served its purpose but wasn't anything to be flying celebrities here for.
It was the sour cream chicken enchiladas -- layered with spiced shredded chicken, sour cream and queso fresco and topped with salsa -- that turned our head.
The Food Network's hugely successful show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives recently visited Niko Niko's Greek restaurant in Montrose. Amidst owner Dimitri Fetokakis's banter with hyper host Guy Fieri was this little nugget of information: Niko Niko's no longer slow-marinates its legendary lamb shank. Rather, it uses a new-fangled "food tumbler" which claims to achieve 24 hours worth of marinating in 20 minutes.
That's a big difference. I've been going to Niko Niko's for at least 15 years, starting back when Dimitri's mom ran the shop and Dimitri would occasionally deliver food on air to the Stevens and Pruitt radio show when KLOL was housed in an old house nearby on Lovett Boulevard. Since then, the restaurant has expanded greatly, taking over most of the block at Montrose and California Street. All positive changes, I'd say, but now they're marinating the lamb shank for only 20 minutes? I decided to check it out.
Fabio's Bar and Grill (212 Westheimer) is hands down the best value in Italian dining in the city. Fabio is famous for making his own pastas, and this little joint is rocking the same pasta you find in Houston's most famous dining institutions. That's because Fabio makes the pasta for those fancy-pants restaurants. The fresh noodles can be eaten on their own, dry.
Parking can be a pain, but the paint shop next to Fabio's closes at five and can be used for additional parking. If you are around the 'Trose around 5:30 p.m., head over and order a split plate of chicken parmigiana with handmade jalapeño-cilantro pasta. Served with garlic bread, the split plate is just the right portion for an exceptional dinner for two for under $20.
Hillcroft -- that magical street where the adventurous soul can find the weird, wild and wonderful cuisine of India and the Middle East. Udipi Café at 5959 Hillcroft is just off 59, tucked between a gas station (go figure) and a jewelry store (go figure again). This restaurant came recommended by Indian nationals working in Houston.
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