Photo by telwink

New restaurants and bars are opening in downtown Houston faster than we can keep up, thanks to a renaissance around the Market Square Park area that's bringing new life to downtown's north side. But that's not the only part of downtown that's blossoming -- nor are those new restaurants the only game in town.

Note: For the purposes of this post, downtown is defined as the 1,178-acre area bounded by I-45, Highway 59 and I-10.

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Photo by Sanggi

Houston's bistros are much more modern -- and far less French.

How do you define a bistro?

If you're going to stick to the traditional Parisian definition, a bistro (or bistrot) is a small, tidy restaurant that serves inexpensive wine and simple dishes in a modest price range. Those dishes are traditionally French "comfort food" recipes like coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon and steak-frites.

In a modern American city, the concept of a bistro goes beyond its Gallic roots but still -- I think -- stays true to form even if it's not serving remotely French food. I consider a bistro in Houston to be a small, unpretentious restaurant -- usually of the neighborhood restaurant variety -- serving hearty, simple food and a selection of alcoholic beverages.

For this reason, I couldn't consider more upscale French restaurants such as L'Olivier, Aura or Philippe -- places which draw audiences from all over the city, as opposed to the restaurant's immediate area. Nor could I consider too-casual spots that don't offer alcohol or a menu beyond a few sandwiches and pastries.

Bistros occupy a necessary middle ground between these two ends of a spectrum as a restaurant that offers a charming atmosphere and a thoughtful food and wine/beer selection with mid-range prices.

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Photo by Joe Stephens

No article on Tex-Mex is complete without a photo of the late, great Felix. It's in the city's bylaws.

It's been more than a century since the first Tex-Mex restaurant opened in Houston. George Caldwell brought The Original Mexican Restaurant to our city in 1907, influenced -- most agree -- by a restaurant of the same name in his hometown of San Antonio.

It would be another 20 years before Felix Mexican Restaurant opened on Lower Westheimer as one of the Tex-Mex restaurants that -- along with Ninfa's, Molina's and Leo's -- would define the genre in Houston. And it would take at least 40 more years before the cuisine had a definitive name: Tex-Mex, used to qualify a cuisine that neither purely Mexican nor purely Texan but an organic fusing of a blend of cultures throughout the region.

Diana Kennedy didn't see it that way, however, and the famous cookbook author dismissed Tex-Mex as Americanized Mexican food served at "so-called Mexican restaurants." This didn't sit well with Texans or Tejanos, who'd been serving what they simply referred to as "Mexican food" for decades.

"Texas-Mexican restaurant owners considered it an insult," wrote former Houston Press food critic Robb Walsh in his introduction to a six-part series on the history of Tex-Mex in 2000. To this day, you can usually bet that if a Texan says, "Let's go out for Mexican," you know they're talking about Tex-Mex.

Although Leo's and Felix are both closed now, Ninfa's is still recognized as the birthplaces of fajitas and Molina's as the standard bearer for the classic Tex-Mex dish of cheese enchiladas topped with chili con carne. And although Kennedy was initially dismissive of the genre, Tex-Mex is now considered to be America's first regional cuisine -- beloved not just in Texas, but throughout the world.

It's fajitas and enchiladas dishes that continue to define Tex-Mex cuisine in Houston, as much as frozen margaritas in Dallas, or the way the puffy taco symbolizes Tex-Mex in San Antonio. In compiling this list, I wanted to spotlight the 10 restaurants in Houston that preserve the standards of these beloved dishes -- the fajitas, the cheese enchiladas, the chili con queso, the margarita -- and serve as cultural touchstones for the history of the cuisine itself.

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Photo by Katharine Shilcutt

Houston's classic food trucks offer more than just tacos, such as the arepas found at Sabor Venezolano.

What differentiates a "classic" food truck from those on last week's list of Houston's Top 10 "Fancy" Food Trucks?

For starters, a classic food truck has been around for at least a few years prior to the gourmet food truck craze -- if not a decade longer. Classic food trucks are usually found at their same spot every single day, decamping only to visit the commissary and then quickly reclaiming their time-worn location in the parking lot of a car wash, a grocery store or an auto repair place.

And, as inveterate taco truck blogger Jay Rascoe of Guns & Tacos put it in a 2011 guide to Houston's best taco trucks: "The true taco truck, the humble servant of the diverse world of mobile cuisine, does not tout self-congratulatory and misleading terms such as 'gourmet' or 'chef-driven.'"

Without further ado, here are our 10 favorite classic trucks -- not just taco trucks -- in Houston:

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Giggity.

There was a period of time in my life when I couldn't get enough of that first date feeling. It's akin to the adrenaline rush of skydiving or rock climbing -- except often with the promise of food or drinks in lieu of potentially plummeting to your death. (Sure, there's the danger of emotional pain instead of physical pain, but that probably won't happen until at least several dates away.)

Since a first date is often the initial and most important impression you'll make, you want that impression to be memorable. But how do you achieve "memorable" without also committing the cardinal sin of trying too hard? You plan an awesome, low-key, casual yet elegant first date -- that's how.

Although I've been out of the dating game for a while now, I still remember that my favorite first dates were just like that: low-key and loose. I enjoyed it immensely when a guy planned an evening that started out with coffee and/or a drink, with the possibility of more to come if that first sip went well. (And by "more to come," I mean dinner or hopping over to another bar to continue the evening. Get with it.) When the first-date planning was left to me, I often did the same.

Were I still dating today, these are ten of the afternoons or evenings I'd plan for a first date. All of these destinations also double as terrific occasions to reconnect with your spouse or partner as well, so book a babysitter and make it a date.

Note: Most of these first dates involve a small degree of walking, so ditch the crazy heels.

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Photos by Groovehouse

The first annual Haute Wheels food truck festival.

Talk about an agonizing list to write. Houston food trucks have never been more clever, more inventive or more consistently enjoyable than they are right now. (The most recent sold-out Haute Wheels food truck festival can surely attest to that.) A few years of winnowing out dilettantes since the first "fancy" food trucks started hitting the streets in 2010 has distilled the selection into the best and brightest mobile food units we've ever had to offer.

Some of the "old-timers" are still around, albeit in different iterations: Oh My! Pocket Pies, for example, concentrates more on catering and direct sales to spots like Inversion Coffee House these days. Zilla Street Eats is defunct, but you can find very similar dishes at chef Jason Kerr's new restaurant, Hollister Grill. The Modular has been transformed into Goro & Gun, a downtown ramen shop drawing lots of local attention. And The Eatsie Boys have gone full brick-and-mortar, opening a full-service restaurant of the same name in Montrose.

See also:
- A (Very Nearly) Comprehensive Guide to Houston's Food Trucks
- Burritos the Size of a Toddler: The 10 Best Food Truck Dishes
- Terrorist Attacks, Drugs and Danger: Why City Council Doesn't Want Food Trucks Downtown

But the big guns like H-Town StrEATs, Phamily Bites and Bernie's Burger Bus have never left the road, and are still trucking today. Bernie's has done so well for itself, in fact, that owner Justin Turner now has a fleet of bright yellow school buses roaming the city.

Meanwhile, promising new faces are cropping up every day: Look for trucks such as Craft Infusion, Miso Yummy and Fraiche to dominate this list next year, if their food stays as fun and fresh as it is right now. And while we have far, far, far more than 10 terrific food trucks in this city, here are the 10 best (give or take a few) on the streets today.

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Photo by Hotel de la Ville Monza

"How may we do our best to ensure your dining experience is the polar opposite of Fawlty Towers today?"

It's hard to find good help, or so the saying goes. Indeed, many of the chefs and restaurant owners I've spoken with over the years privately admit that finding good waitstaff in Houston can be a Sisyphean task: You manage to find a truly great server or two, they dazzle your diners and then -- because this is a very marketable skill we're talking about -- they're lured away to another restaurant, and your search begins anew.

But at the restaurants we're spotlighting today, the service remains consistently spectacular from visit to visit -- whether the same employees are retained or not. These restaurants run the gamut from fine dining to mom-and-pop joints and all manner of cuisines.

They have one thing in common, however: Service that makes every meal memorable. The kind of service that encourages you to return again and again just to see a favorite waiter or catch up with restaurant owners who treat you like family. The subject of this week's cafe review, L'Olivier, is an excellent example of old-school service in an updated climate -- and so are the 10 restaurants below.

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simplyrecipes.com

Make one of these ten deviled eggs recipes for Easter.

Each Easter, my family and I dye hard-boiled eggs with the standard grocery-store dyeing kit. My mom then hides them around the house for our Easter egg scavenger hunt/overly competitive holiday tradition on Easter morning.

After we all run around the house in hopes of being the Easter egg hunt champion of the year, my mom puts the eggs to good use and makes deviled eggs. Like every other house in America, I know we are not the only ones who make deviled eggs to enjoy for the remainder of the weekend.

As good as the original recipe for deviled eggs is, it's always fun to spice things up and make creative and unordinary versions. Here are ten deviled eggs recipes you can whip together this Easter for a fun twist on the basic recipe.

10. Avocado Deviled Eggs

As we all know, avocados are creamy and smooth, so they work well as a substitution for mayonnaise in deviled eggs. Instead of mayonnaise, use about one and a half to two avocados, and instead of mustard, use about two tablespoons of ranch dressing and a tablespoon of sour cream. Blend these ingredients with the egg yolks so that the mixture is creamy and smooth. Add a little bit of lime juice, just as you would with guacamole. Finish by adding chopped shallots or onions, and salt. Pipe into the egg whites and you're done.

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Photo by Ed Schipul

We really don't specialize in spectacular airport greeting sculptures.

I'm not gonna lie: Finding good eats around Intercontinental Airport (or, if you must, Bush Intercontinental Airport -- true Houstonians still say "the Summit," "Transco Tower" and "Intercontinental Airport") is tough. This isn't like eating around Hobby Airport, where you're smack in the middle of the city and interesting dining neighborhoods like South Houston abound.

No. Greenspoint and the surrounding areas near Intercontinental are mostly a wasteland of chain restaurants, mediocre hotels filled with exhausted business travelers and one of the city's saddest malls.

That said, it is still possible to eke out some good food in the area. This is Houston, after all. If you can't find at least 10 decent restaurants within 10-mile radius, you're not trying hard enough.

Even more promising is the fact that many of those good, decent restaurants serve some of the city's most iconic cuisines -- Tex-Mex, seafood, Vietnamese, Cajun and Southern -- so you can direct those sad-sack business travelers to experience a little of Houston while they're in the area. I know from experience: Room service gets real old after a few trips.

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Photo by Katharine Shilcutt

The Birdie Galore at Cafe TH: roasted chicken over all the vegetables you could ever want.

It's reader request time around here, and this week's reader request was for a list of paleo-friendly restaurants around Houston. (See, you do love our lists. Yes you do.)

Although I don't adhere to the paleo diet, many of my good friends do. Here's an explanation of the nutritional regimen in a nutshell, for the uninitiated: The paleo (short for "paleolithic") diet encourages the consumption of foods which advocates claim were abundant in the diets of paleolithic-era peoples. Fish, seafood, grass-fed meats, eggs, vegetables, fruits, mushrooms (and other fungi), roots, seeds and nuts are all fair game. It discourages consumption of foods that cavemen wouldn't have had access to: gluten of any kind, grains, legumes, dairy products, potatoes, refined salt, refined sugar, processed oils and basically any and all processed foods.

To go into all the pros and cons of eating a paleo diet would take all day. Suffice it to say the diet has its proponents and its detractors. Neither I nor Eating...Our Words are advocating any kind of diet except the kind of diet where you're doing the healthiest things you can for your body. If paleo is that diet for you, here's a list of places that make it easy to stick to your clubs. (Cavemen didn't have guns.)

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