Houston Entree

Something to Chew On

We’ve been overindulging a bit lately, so today we’ll concentrate on reading rather than consuming.  That is, we’ll take a quick look at a few of our favorite food blogs, all of them local except for one.

And the one non-local sort of wishes she were here, in that she’s the Homesick Texan.  The Texan, Lisa Fain, is a former Houstonian now living in New York.  In this current New York Times article, Fain explains that she got a taste for big city life by watching Sesame Street as a kid.  So maybe PBS really is out to brainwash your kids, after all.

Fain has made a name for herself with her blog, which is filled with recipes for dishes like poblano chorizo potato salad, and Hatch Chile apple cobbler, which take Texas food and make it even more intense.  The blog gets around 15,000 views a day, but that total will probably increase now that Fain has published her first cookbook. (The cookbook is the inspiration for the Times article.)  Fain, who has lived in New York for 15 years, says “I do love Texas. I just didn’t know I loved it until I lived in New York.”  Isn’t that always the way?

Food in Houston is one of the better strictly local restaurant blogs.  Between 2007 and 2009 The Anonymous Eater posted frequently, then went on hiatus.  AE returned just this summer, and has blogged only twice, covering a wide range of restaurants.  The newish Sorrel Urban Bistro gets this bottom line:   “These are simple dishes, often with only 3 or 4 high quality ingredients. The kitchen is big on balancing contrasting flavors. Their minimalist approach to ingredients nicely fills a void in Houston's maximalist restaurant scene.”

As this quote shows, AE’s writing is clear, knowledgeable, and unembellished.  Something about the blogger’s tone inspires confidence in her judgments.  We hope he’ll be posting a little more frequently. 

tasty-bits takes a different approach.  Misha, as the blogger styles him- or herself, posts very infrequently indeed.  There are a couple of posts from this year, then there’s a break going back to 2009.  But Misha is more essayist than blogger.  This early 2011 two-part series (found at the above link) about what Houston lacks in order to join the first ranks of restaurant cities is quite impressive.  Misha writes about Houston diners “who are increasingly resigned to restaurants that charge premium prices for interchangeable menus of comfort food staples,” and notes that when Alison Cook (author of her own formidable food blog) tried to come up with a Top-10 list of new restaurants for 2010, she had to stop at eight.

But Misha (who apparently travels to Copenhagen “where cooking today is reaching stratospheric levels”) holds out high hope for the city’s “gastro-underground.”  (Wish we’d thought of that term ourselves.)  That is, the city’s pop-up restaurants, and private progressive dinners put on by Randy Rucker and others.  Misha writes, “Some of the most exciting food I came across [last year] was right here in Houston. Just not in venues where you’d expect to see it.”

Misha has very interesting thoughts on how the local fine-dining chefs of the 1980s, led by Robert Del Grande, “failed to inspire a generation of young cooks” to follow in their footsteps.

All in all, this is a great read, one that may very well point to the future of adventurous Houston cooking.

House of Birds Delivers the Spice

Do you ever get so intrigued by a restaurant’s name or sign that you just pull over and order some food? 

That happened to us this past weekend as we were en route to the AMC 30 on Dunvale.  As we turned off Richmond onto Dunvale, a sign at the corner almost gave us whiplash.  It had two attractions:  the name of the restaurant was Bird’s House, and Bird’s House billed itself as having “The Taste of Bethlehem.”

News in Brews

We were all set to blog about blogging today—to point out some of the better written, and more interesting food blogs in town, that is—when we came banged our heads against this very exciting Caroline Gallay piece about Karbach Brewing  in Culturemap.  

SUDS

The next few months will be an usually exciting time in Houston restaurant history, what with the upcoming openings of Uchi, Randy Rucker’s still-unnamed new place in the Museum District, and Chris Shepherd’s Underbelly, which has the craft-beer bar Hay Merchant attached to it.  And that’s not a complete list.

But we’re going to go ahead and declare that this still-unnamed “exciting time” will begin next week, when the first Karbach beers go out to Petrol Station and other fine establishments.  We’re so enthused about Karbach because of the pedigree of its crew. 

Brewmaster Eric Warner is coming here from beer-happy Denver.  Gallay notes that Warner has won “more than 20 Great American Beer Fest Medals, (and) more than 10 World Beer Cups.”  Most impressively, he trained in Munich at the prestigious Weihenstephan Abbey, with its oldest-brewery-on-earth history (1040 A.D.) and it graduate program in brewing.  Gallay writes, “To be accepted as a foreigner is especially impressive.”

Warner helped start what is now Left Hand Brewery, and was CEO of Maryland’s Flying Dog brewery.  Quite a resume.

The rest of the crew has considerable expertise in distribution and in the beer business in general.  Their equipment sounds sophisticated enough to correct for Houston’s not-so-great water.   

Warner will represent Karbach at next weekend’s Brewmaster's Fest in Galveston.  They’ll be pouring their beers, which include an IPA, a lager and wheat, so let the suds begin to flow. 

On the subject of beer, we have a correction for our post about 8^th Wonder Brewery.  Brewmaster Aaron Corsi spent time in Denmark, but is not Danish.  And only Ryan Soroka and Corsi have UH ties, not the whole team.

There's Just One Hatch

How can you tell when it’s late August in Houston? 

If you’re the glass-half-empty sort, you can just look at the temperature.  But if you’re only looking for good news, you can heed the call from Central Market to check out their Hatch Chile Festival.  Other grocers, notably Whole Foods, get into the act as well, but none with as much gusto as CM.  

Besides the peppers themselves, you can get Hatch-marinated sirloin, Hatch and Cheese corn rolls, Hatch hamburger buns.  The list really does go on, but you already know all that.  

BITES

The Hatch Chile movement has now reached the point that restaurants all over town have introduced special menus, or even, as in the case of Chuy’s, whole menus devoted to the noble New Mexican, as reported by Katharine Shilcutt.  Hatch burgers always hit the spot, and we’re intrigued by the Hatch pretzels they’re baking over at Cafe Luz. 

 We bring all this up because an NPR story from late July got us worried.  New Mexico now devotes 70 percent fewer acres to Hatch chile cultivation than it did 20 years ago.  The harvest is labor intensive, and therefore expensive, and so cheaper peppers from China and Mexico have begun eating into the Hatch market share.  

Given the explosion of Houston-area demand for Hatch peppers, this comes as surprising, and troubling news.  We like peppers in general, but the Hatch chiles really do combine flavor with piquance, and generally live up to the hype.  And we’re fond of our neighbors in New Mexico.  They’ve got our support, till this year’s peppers run out and beyond. 

 

Downtown Sees a Little Light

When the Kitchen Incubator opened last November, it felt like the best, or at least the coolest, thing to happen to downtown dining in a good while.  Efforts to make downtown a dining district have essentially failed, leaving much of the (by far) most interesting and soulful buildings in Houston sitting empty.  But, around the time Market Square reopened, largely surrounded by failed restaurants (excepting the now thriving north side of the Square, of course), the truly visionary Incubator turned on its lights. 

 

The premise of the Kitchen Incubator is simple, but inspired.  Co-owners Lucrece Borrego and Jesus Acosta opened a large, certified kitchen that has no permanent users.  Instead they lease the space, even on an hourly basis, to anyone who wants to test his or her chops on the restaurant quality equipment.  Dozens of chefs and would-be chefs have taken advantage of the program, and the space has indeed been an incubator of dishes and ideas.  

CHECK IT OUT

The even better news is that now you can buy these same dishes in the tiny Cafe Luz, which serves as the Incubator’s storefront.  Borrego and Acosta teamed with barista Frank Freeman to bring first-rate coffee and handmade soda programs to downtown.  You can also buy a wide variety of boxed lunches and desserts, made by the chefs working back in Incubator.

 If you’re lucky, you can even get a lunch hot off the grill.  Like we did today. After making a couple of very satisfactory coffee runs to Café Luz, we went in looking for lunch.  We found chef James Ashley of Pure Catering in front of the stove, preparing lamb kebabs and chicken salads.  We went for the kebabs, which came with a hearty scoop of sprouted lentils, and some veggies.  It was a tasty meal, and also a very social one, as we few lucky customers chatted about what a great place Café Luz was, and how lucky coffee-deprived downtown was to have it.

The tiny café has a very good vibe, and very good food and drink.  It’s also quite beautiful.  They hope to start offering hot lunches, prepared by the rotating guest chefs, on Thursdays and Fridays.

Wait, I almost forgot to mention the dulce de leche ice cream.  The owners use liquid nitrogen to thicken the dessert, so it turns out extra creamy.  A splash of vanilla porter gives it a little tickle at the end.  Highly recommended. 

Hofbrau in the (Bar Munich) House

Last week we noted how few Spanish restaurants there are in Houston, and were grateful for the recent opening of Majorca Bistro and Tapas in Midtown.  We wondered if the dearth of true Spanish tapas was due to our lack of true Spaniards.  That got us thinking about other under-represented European cuisines, such as the German—if “cuisine” isn’t too fancy a word for a menu of bratwurst, sauerkraut and beer. 

Not that there’s anything wrong that.  No, indeed.

According to b4-u-eat.com's listing, there are only 11 German places in town, as opposed to, say, 17 Filipino restaurants. 

Why so few? 

It can’t be for a lack of Germans, or at least for a lack of German-Americans.  Germans helped build Houston, along with the rest of Texas.  And some of the best-loved parts of Texas fly their (metaphorical) German colors quite proudly.  But Houston doesn’t even have a proper Oktoberfest, though we celebrate Cinco de Mayo with more gusto than the Mexicans.  It’s the same with St. Patrick’s Day and Ireland.  

Maybe it’s because German culture became so deeply embedded in American culture, what with all the hamburgers and frankfurters and sausage and beer, that we don’t really see it as a separate culture.  In any case, we’d like to have easier access to real German beer and good homemade brats. 

This was brought home to us a few years ago on a trip to New Braunsfels.   

A Very Hot Lunch

Call us crazy, but we had lunch outside today.  And not an 11:30 “business” lunch either, when the temperature was probably still in double digits.  No, it was 2 pm, and the temperature had hit 104.

WHAT'S HOT

We happened to be downtown, close to the redesigned Market Square, which we love.  We had marveled at the lunch crowds that flocked there in cool days of April, but had wondered if anyone would show up in August, so we wanted to check it out.  We were also inspired by the Project for Public Spaces’ (PPS) recent designation of Houston as the “Placemaking capital of North America.”  Along with Discovery Green, Market Square was one of the newly made “places” that caught PPS’ attention.

But back to lunch.  We went to the tiny Niko Niko's where we ordered some hot weather food: falafel sandwich, hummus, and a can of beer that started out cold but warmed up pretty fast.  Summer puts us in a hummus state of mind, probably because the spread is served cold, and also because it originated in a very hot part of the world.  Niko Niko’s version is pretty good, but not as much of a pick-me-up as the tangy version we had at Garson the other day.   

We were a little confused, again, by the architecture of Niko Niko’s sandwiches, if not by the flavor.  The pita doesn’t wrap all the way around the filling, so you have to balance your gyro carefully.  Still, we love the way they face the summer heat with good cheer—and a squadron of hard-working mister fans.  

 They worked for a while; I started to sweat just as I was leaving.  I dropped a dollar off with the guy who was playing his horn on the sidewalk, protected only by the slender shade of a traffic light pole.  “You’re a brave man,” I said, then hot-footed it back to the A/C.

More Tapas, Please

We’ve always been a little disappointed that there weren’t more Spanish and/or tapas restaurants in Houston.  Spain is our most beloved country, except for our own (and maybe Mexico), but even if it weren’t, the idea of grazing on tapas for dinner is so perfect that we wonder why we ever eat anything else.  

BITES

Of course, thanks to our health codes, you can’t have a true Spanish-style tapas bar in Houston.  In Spain they set their tapas out on the counter and you point out the ones that you want.  You can’t set food out like that here, despite the fact that Spaniards always look pretty healthy when we’re lucky enough to be among them.  We’ve wondered if you couldn’t refrigerate, somehow, a stainless steel counter and keep the little bites suitably cool.  

But we digress.  In Houston, and probably just about everywhere else in the U.S., you have to order your tapas off the menu and then wait.  No instant gratification for you!  Beyond that, Houston has been a little slow to embrace the tapas concept, or Spanish food in general.  We have Mi Luna, the very classy Rioja, the lovely but not terribly Spanish-feeling Tintos, and the lively Andalucia Tapas downtown.  Part of the menu at El Meson is Spanish.  And let’s not forget the really very tasty Tapas Capriccio.

(We also had the slightly puzzling trend of very good restaurants giving themselves Spanish names—Ibiza and Catalan—but not serving particularly Spanish food.)

Not a very long list for a city this size.  And we don’t have any regional Spanish places—Galician or Catalan or Basque.  Maybe it’s because we only have a very small Spanish population (as in Spanish Spanish) here.  

It's a Steal! Off Menu Specials Slip Out the Door

Why do people steal from restaurants and hotels? 

Is it because those private businesses thrive by making themselves feel like public spaces, open and available to all?  (At least, all who can pay.)  Is it because they strive to make their customers feel like they’re at home, so that their stuff sort of is our stuff?  Or do customers steal simply because it’s easy to do?  

Eater.com has been running a series called Shit People Steal, in which restaurateurs report on what gets stolen from them—and anonymous customers talk about the “shit” they personally like to steal.  Eater is a national network of food websites, so reports have come in from all over.  Eater/San Francisco reported that thieves recently made off with a very heavy sounding outside table from one restaurant.  

Closer to home, a Houston-area pint-glass thief confessed to his crimes with no apparent remorse.  When his wife put her foot down about a recent theft, he left the glass in the restaurant parking lot, rather than returning it.  Not surprisingly, somehow, the Strip House’s naughty napkins, featuring silhouettes of totally nude women, have proven irresistible to thieves.  (We’d like to have one of those ourselves.)  

A thief with a touch less class, accurately described as an “effin asshole” in a Good Dog Hot Dog tweet, made off with Good Dog Hot Dog's power generator just before the gourmet hot dog truck was to appear at White Linen Night in the Heights.   That’s a daunting story, one that makes you wonder how anyone has the stomach to go into the food business.

It reminds us of the time that Hubcap Grill owner Ricky Craig told us about the painful thefts he suffered at his downtown location.  He told us how thieves will take anything that’s not nailed down from the outside of the building.  How they’d break in at night and eat all his food.  One night someone broke through his front door, put a chain around his ATM machine, and dragged it out of the building, presumably in a pickup.

Let’s close on a less brutal crime.  If you go to the comments section of the Good Dog Hot Dog story, you’ll read about a Lady who Thieves while she Lunches, and also about how stealing silverware from the Black-Eyed Pea is considered a leisurely family activity by some.

 

Beer and Dogs Just Belong Together

The heat and drought of this summer is making it hard for some of us to concentrate, but other citizens are made of sterner stuff. 

Two important advocacy groups have recently sprung up in the world of food and drink.  Open the Taps is a statewide group calling for the end to, or at least the modification of, Texas’ current “3-tier” beer distribution system, which prevents brewers from selling their product directly to consumers.  The system forces brewers to choose between selling their product in their own brewpubs, or at their breweries, and selling it in retail stores.  

It ain’t right; it’s un-American, and certainly un-Texan, if you believe all our “land-of-free” palaver.  

The movement, if that’s not too grand a term, started in Houston, we’re proud to say, with a July gathering at Moon Tower Inn.  The Dallas branch will have a launch party at The Common Table on August 27; the San Antonio branch will open with an October 22 meeting at Freetail Brewing, known in these parts as the brewpub that got away.  If you’re interested in helping pressure the next legislative session to change Texas’s unfair and outdated laws, you might join the group.  We’re presuming beer will be served. 

From beer we turn to pets.  Many a Houstonian, ourselves included, have returned from vacations, taken  our dogs out of their lonely kennels, and wished we could take our best friends to restaurants with us, like they do in Paris, France.  It turns out that Houston regulations are strict (pets and food can’t be in the same space) and slow to change, which again belies our image as being unfettered, go-go capitalists.  

Even other Texas cities have passed ordinance changes that allow patrons to bring their dogs with them onto restaurant patios.  Now the crusade has reached Houston.  Even Mayor Parker, who presumably has some very important issues on her hands, has written a letter urging city council passage of a “dogs on patios” change to the current ordinance.  

The change is being pushed by the group Paws on Patios.  According to this culturemap article, the modification will allow restaurants to request a variance allowing them to admit dogs (and presumably other pets) to their patios.

If you can’t wait for the legislative process to run its course, you can always check out Boneyard Drinkery on Washington, which combines an open-air bar with a large dog run.  They get around the food restrictions by having food trucks park nearby to serve their customers.

Apparently business has been great.  Owner Justin Bardwell told the Chronicle, “I can’t believe no one has thought of this before.” 

In fact, Paws on Patios supporters will be at the Drinkery this Thursday night at 8 pm, passing out petitions.