PLATTERS of fried pigs ears, consumed in the dimly-lit front room of an old, single-family home. Innovative cocktails served in a smart tire shop turned roadhouse by twentysomething entrepreneur/bartenders. Vast and remote neighborhoods of recent (or not so recent) arrivals where restaurants offer everything from regional Mexican cooking to Vietnamese-Cajun and Uighur, to London-style curries.
It’s a city where the food is as good as the low numbers of outsiders who’ve sampled it are appalling. We’re talking about the fourth largest city in the United States, a town at the heart of a fast-growing metropolitan area. Houston, the Texas city that wasn’t there yesterday but is very much there today and is probably not going anywhere, any time soon.
From early on, Houston — like so many boomtowns before it — has been diverse enough to embrace a wide variety of cooking styles. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to get anyone to agree which single genre might most accurately define the city. In order to get a sense of Houston’s food culture, it’s best to cover all your bases — try a little of everything.
To get you started, we rounded up the favorites of a whole slew of local chefs and regional experts and put them to the test ourselves. The results were impressive.
In fact, after two visits in 2009, it’s easy to conclude that Houston has one of the most satisfying food scenes in the country right now. Best of all? Things are just getting started.
BEST PLACE FOR TAMPICO-STYLE MEXICAN SEAFOOD
Tampico Seafood
Houston is a seafood kind of town in the way that most towns along the Gulf of Mexico are seafood towns. Take, for instance, the Mexican port city of Tampico. Robb Walsh, the food critic for the Houston Press, chooses this Airline Drive fish restaurant as his favorite of the many Mexican oyster bars around town. The categorization is misleading; more than oysters, this spare, brightly-lit room is known better for its pick-your-own red snapper (from behind the counter), subsequently grilled up with a pile of veggies and served to you on a platter. Ours came with briny, grilled Gulf shrimp. So should yours (2115 Airline Drive, 713-862-8425).
BEST DOWNTOWN VIETNAMESE LUNCH COUNTER
Les Givral’s Kahve
Most evenings, you can find Bryan Caswell in the kitchen at Reef, an upscale seafood restaurant in Midtown. Both Caswell and the restaurant — featuring regional catch with unique global influences — have been showered with deserved praise. Eating at Les Givral’s reminds Caswell of his childhood in the Montrose neighborhood. Growing up in town in the 1980s, he says, you were more likely to experience Vietnamese cooking long before other anything else exotic. Simple, clean soups (pho) and sandwiches (banh mi) at low prices are the draw at this simple café facing Downtown’s Market Square (801 Congress Street, 713-547-0444).
NIFTIEST REGIONAL FUSION
Crawfish fried rice at Hank’s
In a recent story for the awesomely-named Garden & Gun Magazine (WANT), regional foodways expert John T. Edge tipped this New Chinatown/Bellaire strip-mall find as the home of one of 100 southern dishes to eat before you die. We’d amend that — this dish, a simple but mouthwatering blend of Asian and Cajun, is too good to eat just once. An order – $6.99 – feeds two. Or one very happy, hungry person (10800 Bellaire Boulevard, 281-988-8974).
BEST PLACE TO SEE HOW OIL BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER
London Sizzler
Houston is crawling with Brits. In fact, it sometimes feels nearly as British-influenced as New York, but in a very different way, perhaps because it’s hard to be a pompous twit for long when you live in Texas, (unless we’re talking Austin, which we aren’t). Blame British Petroleum, and the energy biz at large, we guess — whatever, if it means perfectly Londinium-like curry houses like this one, bring it. A dark room in a strip mall next to a freeway (many restaurants in Houston fit this description, so we should probably quit leaning on it), this is one of the favorite hangouts for Chef Chris Shepherd of Washington Avenue’s top-rated Catalan restaurant. Shepherd says that the owners here are “like family”. Try the goat! (6690 Southwest Freeway, 713-783-2754).
BEST CHICKEN FRIED STEAK
Barbecue Inn
It’s called the Barbecue Inn and it’s been called that since the 1940s when this friendly roadhouse opened in what is now a rather ramshackle section of North Houston. Chef Randy Evans of the new seasonal / farm-to-table restaurant Haven says he’s never tried the barbecue at the Inn — “not even once.” He does sneak up here for the fried chicken, the chicken-fried steak, the fried shrimp and fried oysters. So do others — every now and then you’ll see a local chef tweeting that they’ve just had lunch here. The room is dark but welcoming, and if you sit at the counter you get to see the servers (who haven’t changed in appearance in what seems like two decades) fussing good-naturedly at the kitchen staff when things go wrong (116 Crosstimbers Street, 713-695-8112).
BEST NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK
Good polish food at Polonia Restaurant
It’s not just Houston’s only Polish restaurant, it’s also a friendly neighborhood joint, tucked away in a quiet area of the city’s nebulous northwest. Run by a couple that’s half Polish, half Houstonian (with roots in Bolivia), the place is all hospitality and the meats are superb. It’s difficult to find a food writer or chef around town who doesn’t flip for the duck confit which includes the aforementioned duck leg, pierogi, cabbage rolls, kielbasa, meat loaf, bigos (a hearty stew) and roast pork. It’s said to feed two — four is more like it (1900 Blalock, 713-464-9900).
BEST PLACE TO FIND MARCUS DAVIS THAT IS NOT THE BREAKFAST KLUB
Sparkle’s Hamburger Spot
The Breakfast Klub is one of Houston’s favorite places to start the day. The food is great and the room is nice enough but we suspect a lot of the Klub’s appeal has to do with the fact that you can’t help but like Marcus Davis, the restaurant’s convivial co-owner. When not eating his own biscuits and gravy, Davis heads east of downtown for juicy burgers at the very old-school Sparkle’s. Also spotted here: local rapper Paul Wall (1515 Dowling Street, 713-225-8044).
WHERE TO SEE A TOP CHEF LET HER HAIR DOWN
Beaver’s
Monica Pope is possibly one of the most serious chefs in Houston, a champion of the local, the sustainable, the seasonal, the responsible and the artisanal. Her restaurant, t’afia, is a spare affair that draws die-hard eaters from around the state. She’s Houston’s own Alice Waters, but with a better sense of humor. She also may be about to go Hollywood — spies reported seeing Pope taping a certain Bravo show in Southern California last November. Pope is a fan of Houston’s many hole-in-the-wall Asian restaurants, but you can also see her letting her hair down at Beaver’s, a roadhouse bar and BBQ joint she co-owns just northwest of Downtown. Smoky queso dip, housemade jalepeno pork sausage and a country-fried New York strip steak are complimented by a compelling cocktail list that includes the tasty Mayahuel Fizz — Mezcal, rosemary, lime juice, bitters and egg white (2310 Decatur Street, 713-864-2328).
WHERE TO EAT OFFAL
Feast
A daring British restaurant specializing in the waste-not, want-not style of cooking (or, as some call it, the nose-to-tail approach) has been showered with accolades for its black pudding, fish pie and other dishes many Americans are not exactly accustomed to eating. Former New York Times food critic Frank Bruni wrote last year that the restaurant has “no real peer” in major cities that “pride themselves on their epicurean adventurousness.” And what an adventure Feast is — a recent menu advertised rabbit lung, prune and hazelnut soup (at $8.95, what a steal!) which you can follow up with the duck neck haggis entrée for $21.95. The previous experience of the expat-owners in Fergus Henderson’s London kitchens shows, but not everyone has to eat weird. Some of the most popular items on the menu are scallops drowned in a satisfying mushroom brandy cream sauce (topped with cheese) and a crispy roasted pork belly served with potato cake, red cabbage and apples (219 Westheimer Road, 713-529-7788).
To dig deeper into Houston’s culinary scene, check out the city’s year-long series of chef-led tours at houstonculinarytours.com.
RAISE A GLASS!
Houston likes to drink — as such, it has some spectacular watering holes. Here are a couple of bars to belly up to on your next visit.
Anvil
A sophisticated cocktail lounge in an old tire shop not far from Downtown, young entrepreneurs own the place and serve as its bartenders. Check out their list of 100 classic cocktails to try before you die (1424 Westheimer Road).
La Carafe
Houston sometimes feels like it was born yesterday. In this Market Square watering hole that feels like it was stolen from somewhere in New Orleans (the building it occupies was built in 1847) you can start drinking at noon. Just know the bartenders won’t necessarily be winning any prizes for congeniality any time soon (813 Congress Street).
Pearl Bar
It’s cavernous, it’s loud, there are pool tables and shuffleboard, there are drunk people telling you their life story and sometimes the staff whips out the hula hoops. Best experienced after a few drinks somewhere else (4216 Washington Avenue).