Frank's: The neighborly pizza place downtown

Lately we’ve been keeping track of what the world outside our sprawling region thinks about Houston food. But while James Beard nominations are excellent things, it takes more than state-of-the-art dining to make for a food scene. You have to have your daily, low-key joints as well. They’re the backdrop against which the stars shine so brightly.

A recent video posted on Eater got us thinking about Frank’s Pizza downtown, which is probably our favorite American pizza place. The bar has been raised very high for pizza here the last 10 years or so. In fact, we can’t think of a single Houston menu item that has improved as much as pizza. Not so very long ago, a night out for pie probably meant a trip to Star. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But now pizza that would be recognizable to an Italian, or even a Brazilian, is easy to find. We’re talking about the coal-fired ovens of Grimaldi's and New York Pizzeria, and the thin, heat-blistered Neapolitan pizza of Dolce Vita and the new Pizaro's. And the Brazilian pizza of Friends Pizzeria, and the Brazilian-Italian hybrid of Piola.

Still, this is not the pie we’re going to eat routinely. It’s almost too good for that. So, back to Frank’s, and the video that confirmed the wisdom of our love.

The pizza here is actually pretty good. We prefer Frank’s crust to Star’s, for example. But it’s the place itself, and the people in it, that we love most. It’s one of the most truly urban places in Houston. By that we mean that it caters to a wide variety of socio-economic types, and that’s it’s staffed by colorful, if sometimes doleful, crew. The design is impressive as well, with its mezzanine section and its big, street-side windows, perfect for watching the occasional pedestrian and the frequent homeless person in action.

Here’s where the video comes in. It shows a homeless man standing in front of Frank’s door as James Brown’s “Living in America” blares out of the sound system. (Did we mention they play really great music?) The man responds to the music, slowly at first, before hitting foot-shuffling glory. So the guy’s blocking the door, dancing, probably scaring away customers, and how does Frank’s respond? With true urban style. One of the co-owners, Debby Love, turns up the music then walks to the door and begins dancing herself, more or less mimicking his moves from her side of the door. It’s a sublime, urban moment that is all-too-rare in our suburbanized city. To cap off the show, when a customer does approach, the homeless man spins out of the doorway and walks away cooly, as if the incident had never happened. (Though you know the music was still playing in his head.)

Now that was sweet.

Chris Shepherd's Underbelly debuts March 5

We had our first taste of Underbelly on Sunday.  Now, before you get too jealous,it was a just a visual taste, a peek, that is; an amuse-oeil, if you will.  To be plain, we were at Hay Merchant and couldn’t find a place to perch, so we walked around the building’s corner to the Underbelly wine bar, which  opened last Friday, while the restaurant itself opens March 5.  

Like Culturemap’s Sarah Rufca, we were hoping to get a good look at the interior, but had to settle for a glimpse from the wine bar.  The bar itself is smallish and shaped like a triangle.   The materials are simultaneously cool and woody, and the space felt oddly Scandinavian.  And very different from Hay Merchant.  In fact, walking the few steps between the two entrances, we felt like we’d entered a different world, emerging from the youthful exuberance of craft beer heaven to a sophisticated wine bar with a very polished looking clientele.  (Rufca wrote Chris Shepherd devotees from Catalan were there on opening day.)

We didn’t actually consume anything at the Wine Bar—there was no room to sit there either.  So we finally drove up Waugh to Rudyard’s, which had seating and comfort to spare.  Happily, they’re on the Karbach bandwagon as well, so we had the Sympathy for the Devil Lager, which would be our new go-to beer even if it weren’t brewed in Houston.  

It felt good to be in an old place drinking a new beer.  Even if you can’t get into Hay Merchant (or “Hay Maker” as one confused seeker said the other day when he asked us for directions), you can still be served.  

Every time we go to Rudz we remember what a visiting Brit journalist said when we took him there back in 1989.  He was in the process of falling madly in love with Houston—a story for another time—and this love extended to Rudyard’s.  “If only we had pubs like this in London,” he said, sounding overcome with envy.

That left us sputtering.  “Don’t you?”

“Not like this, we don’t.”  He seemed a little sad.

Attention to detail: Manabu Horiuchi of Kata Robata

We’re as proud as anybody else that Houston chefs have been named as semi-finalists in six categories in the James Beard Foundation Awards, up from last year’s five. But it’s not just the bigger number that’s gotten our attention.  It’s that the Houstonians being honored this year are so drastically different from last year’s group that they appear to represent two different cities.

This change is most obvious in the nominees for Best Chef: Southwest: Anita Jaisinghani of Indika, Hugo Ortega of Hugo's, and Manabu Horiuchi of Kata Robata.  Last year’s Houston nominees were Bryan Caswell of Reef and Randy Rucker, then of Bootsies, and soon of conāt.  How are these two lists different, rather than in number?  Well, in gender and ethnicity, of course.  

Why does this observation get us all het up?  Last year’s nominees were examples of “Texas white guy swagger,” as John Mariani put it yesterday.  While this year’s is obviously not.  Instead we’re represented by cutting edge exponents of Mexican, Indian, and Japanese cuisine.  We love the fact that Houston can be recognized for its roots food (more or less) one year, and for world beat the next.  The city is big enough for both.

Bobby Heugel of Anvil was nominated for the second straight year for Outstanding Bar Program; while Tony’s 25-year-old executive chef Grant Gordon was nominated as a Rising Star.

Last but far from least, Anita Jaisinghani was nominated a second time, this time for Pondicheri in the national Best New Restaurant category.  No other Texas restaurant was nominated.

That about speaks for itself.

Just how special is Houston's restaurant scene?

Culturemap’s Sarah Rufca owns up to the fact that “very city argues that its food scene is unique, its chefs are the best and that its local specialties are more delicious than anyone else's.”  But then she goes on to argue that, this time, in Houston, we’re starting to really believe it.  “Lately Houston's foodies have argued that… the Bayou City is experiencing a culinary coming-of-age to put it on par with not only the best food cities in the country, but the world.” 

We might not go quite that far—the world is a big, tasty place—but we agree with the basic sentiment.  How could we not, with everything that is going on?  In fact, if we restrict our global ambitions a bit, and stipulate that, in 2012, Houston will have as dazzling a food year as anybody, anywhere, then we would agree, even if we are not really sure what’s happening in Santiago de Chile or Istanbul.  

We don’t need to rehearse the reasons for excitement; the beer, the sushi, the carrots, and the butchery have all been well covered.  We’ll just join Rufca in noting that Esquire’s John Mariani more or less agrees, though he doesn’t grant us total world domination.  Mariani, who has long been a voice crying in the national wilderness—“Don’t forget about Houston!”—writes on his Virtual Gourmet website “for the last decade [in Houston] the evolution towards more and more serious (I did not say "formal") dining has been steady and sure.”  

He praises a handful of restaurants that are perhaps not getting their proper acclaim these days, thanks to the exciting upstarts.  “Exciting Mexican restaurants like Hugo's, civilized steakhouses like Pappas Bros., and ethnic eateries of every stripe” make up part of our scene, while “longtime standard bearers like Tony's and Robert Del Grande's RDG Bar Annie” have been “reconfigured.”

We’re not a world food city yet, he implies, largely because we don’t really have a world class restaurant.  We’re “seriously deficient” in French restaurants (but we could've told him that) and, according to Mariani, except for Tony’s, “the city has few Italian restaurants of note.”  (We’re surprised to not see Da Marco regarded.)

But Mariani holds out hope for the future, and looks forward to checking out the 2012 openings.  In the meantime he has three recommendations:  El Real, home to “Texas white guy swagger;” Quattro; and Philippe, where Mariani counsels “getting there early” and ordering “any of the French dishes.”  Get your tamales elsewhere, he implies.  El Real, maybe.

What are your thoughts, dear reader, on Houston’s place in the culinary world?

 

We thought that if we got to The Hay Merchant just minutes after it opened at 3 pm Wednesday, we could belly right up to the bar.  It was raining, and in any event the masses would only pour in after quitting time.  Right?  Wrong.

At 3:30 on its first afternoon, Houston’s new shrine to craft beer was already slammed.  These were our first visual impressions:  Amber Ambrose’s “first look” piece on Eater pointed out some of the bar’s unusual building materials, including 1840s “Coffeyville” bricks taken from a Dynamo Stadium-area demolition, and an eccentric set of found-object tap handles.  These had led us to expect an idiosyncratic design.  But instead Hay Merchant is basically a comfortable, open bar with some televisions and dart boards, albeit one with an antique manhole cover stuck in its antique-brick wall.

It seems clear that co-owner (with Bobby Heugel) Kevin Floyd was more intent on beer processes than anything else as he put Hay Merchant together.  As the Chronicle’s Ronnie Crocker reported, the bar has separate cooling systems for their lagers, as opposed to their other beers; the lager is kept at a deliciously frosty 36 degrees, and the ales at 44 or so.  Who knew the different beer styles did best at different temperatures?  Kevin Floyd, that’s who.

There was a serious, “beer nerd” vibe to the opening minutes, as if we had gathered in a temple, rather than a mere bar.  And of course, we had.  The scene was overwhelmingly male, as well.  Which stuck us as kinda funny, seeing as how Chances, the space’s previous occupant, was perhaps the city’s best-known lesbian bar.

But we digress.  We had our first taste of a No Label brew, a very tasty amber nitro (if we heard the barman right), but didn’t have time to try out the food menu with its “fried pig’s ears” and “blood sausage queso fundido.”

We also had a very interesting conversation with the guy sitting beside us.  He was grading papers, an activity which sometimes ruins our own afternoons.  But his were theology papers; he was a teacher from Strake Jesuit who leads his students in discussions of religion and politics.  We were both more beer enthusiasts than connoisseurs, and some of the Hay Merchant expertise was a little over our heads.  But we had a truly enjoyable 30-minute or so chat before having to run.  For our money, being able to have a real conversation with a total stranger is as much a sign of a great bar as is the technology of beer delivery.  And Hay Merchant’s got both.

Karbach coming to grocery stores, in cans.

For craft brewers like Karbach, putting beer in cans, as opposed to bottles, has suddenly become good business, not to mention cool.   The Chronicle’s Ronnie Crocker reported that the smash-hit Houston brewer is planning to have its beers available in groceries, and in tapless bars, by March 5.  Their fabulous lager, IPA, wheat, and Imperial IPA will be sold in cans, not the brown bottles so long favored by craft-beer makers.  

Canned beer had a bad rap over the years; they were equated with cheap beer, not to mention PRB-swilling poseurs.  Glass equaled class, starting perhaps with Miller’s “Champagne of Bottled Beers” ad campaign of long ago.  No craft beer was sold in a can until 2002, when Colorado’s Oskar Blues produced their Dale’s Pale Ale in a can, according to this Bon Appetite article of 2010.  It was a perhaps a clever marketing ploy on Oskar Blues part, as it set the brewery apart from its competition.  (Article VI of Sam Adams’ "Beer Bill of Rights" states, "Beer shall be offered in bottles, not cans, so that no brew is jeopardized with the taste of metal.")

CANNED GOODS

But it was also a great way to deliver beer.  Somehow Dale’s Pale Ale tasted fresher and crisper than other beers---but not at all like PBR.  Karbach’s Eric Warner explained the can’s benefits to Crocker:  “Cans protect beer more completely from sunlight and provide a better seal from oxygen.”   

Southern Star was the first local craft brewery to sell cans, and the freshness and flavor of its product have been beyond reproach—culminating in this winter’s sensational Mort Vivant.  Not only was the beer fabulous, its Hulk-green can was eye-catching in a way a bottle can never be. 

 Cans offer various eco benefits as well—they’re easier to recycle, and much lighter to transport.  Last but not least, you can hand-crush your can when you finish a beer, an inexplicably satisfying move (to us, at least) that would be ill-advised with a bottle.

We hope that the other new breweries--No Label, 8th Wonder, and Buffalo Bayou, will follow suit.  They haven’t had the market penetration of Karbach, and we haven’t been able to try their beers (8^th Wonder of course is not yet on line).   It would be nice to not have to go to a bar (not that there’s anything wrong with that) to quaff an 1836, let’s say.  

Uchi's Takara sho chiku bai, an “unfiltered” sake, left us wanting more

Let’s say one last word about Uchi before we move on to the opening of The Hay Merchant.  We finally got by to properly try the menu, and to also bask in the warmth of the old Felix’s drastically transformed interior, described here by Melanie Warner for the Chronicle.  Chef/co-owner Tyson Cole calls his cuisine “Japanese farmhouse,” and according to Warner, his new restaurant “takes its inspiration from Japanese farmhouses. The design conveys warmth, texture and a welcoming, low-key environment.”  

That much is certainly true.  We don’t necessarily expect to feel cozy and welcome in the hottest restaurant in town—in fact we expect the exact opposite.  So Uchi really did have us at hello.  Especially since our greeting came from perhaps the enjoyable and personable waiter we’ve ever had—Dale, rightly dubbed by the Press’ Christina Uticone as "the king of Uchi."

FIRST TASTE

We’ll spare you the blow by blow, and just note a few highlights.  We’re not real sake-heads, but Dale got us started on takara sho chiku bai, an “unfiltered” sake that looked like — but didn’t taste like —  pulque.  It held our attention more fully than sake has before—we want more. We got there just early enough to try the happy hour menu; the various crunchy rolls made for thrilling bites, as did, to a surprising extent, the grilled eggplant.  We’re not sure how Team Cole makes it taste so good.  The already famous jar jar duck, which, in its heady combination of smell and taste is the most memorable dish we’ve had in recent years, was the highlight of the “hot tastings” section of the menu.

We didn’t love everything equally.  The seven-piece chef selection of sushi didn’t make a big impression, but maybe that’s because we were so damn satiated by this point.  These little bites add up faster than you’d expect.

We finished our meal with an invigorating lemon gelato accompanied by pistachios and balsamic vinegar.  As comfortable as we felt, we didn’t linger, as the hungry masses really had their eyes on our table.  Uchi had 200 reservations for this Monday night.

We left dazzled and happy, and our bill was about $50 less than we’d expected.  Unfiltered sake must affect our ability to do math.

Even though Houston is generally acknowledged as the Paris of Harris County, it’s never been hotbed of French food, at least not in the nearly 30 years we’ve lived here.  Commentators of decades past (that we can’t find now online) remarked that Dallas had more French restaurants, and Houston more Italian—but we don’t know if they were counting Pizza Hut.  

In 2003, of course, we lashed out at the French for not joining in our really big adventure in Iraq.  And in Houston we didn’t stop at calling them “cheese eating surrender monkeys.”  Back then Robb Walsh reported that a "Theater District restaurant called Papillon Bistro Français had its windows smashed and closed its doors in the face of telephoned threats promising more attacks. Similar threats to La Tour d'Argent on Ella caused that restaurant to close as well.”  

But times have changed.  At the same time that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is announcing an early French withdrawal from Afghanistan, a new wave of Gallic eateries is breaking across Houston.  We already have a nice handful of places, of course, including some that we love, like Cafe Rabelais,  Au Petit Paris, and Philippe (where chef/owner was recently named one of 300 Master Chefs of France in the world), but the next few months are bringing the following:  L'Olivier, on Lower Westheimer, helmed by Olivier Ciesielski, formerly of Tony’s; Salé Sucré, in the Heights, no less; and Artisans in Midtown (they appear to be right on the verge of opening).  The Denis family of Le Mistral fame is behind this one.   Finally, Culturemap reports that Sweet Paris creperie and café will soon open in Rice Village.

French culture is generally not at high tide right now, internatinoally.  In movies like Hugo and Tintin, characters who are supposed to be French (or Belgian) speak with British accents.  And Spain has replaced France as Europe’s go-to food country.  Still, it’s Paris that is synonymous with urbanity, so perhaps it makes sense that, as inner-city Houston becomes more developed, we look to the French.  There is no Barcelona of Harris County, after all.   

Sotol is a smooth alternative to tequila

We’ve been missing Mexico something terrible the last several years.  We lived there once upon a time, and even had a gringo son born there.   After moving back in the early ‘80s, we returned as often as we could—usually to insanely compelling Mexico City itself.  But our travels slowed drastically when the drug wars metastasized into something like real war, and we haven’t been back in four long years.  We know that not all of Mexico is a shooting gallery, of course, but the idea of flying over a war zone to get to Mexico City, or some point farther south, just strikes us as dispiriting.   

So we were thrilled to hear this story on NPR about efforts to introduce the Mexican spirit sotol to the U.S. market.   We’d barely heard of the drink; in fact it was less well known to us than is the sotol plant, known in Latin as the Dasylirion wheeleri, a hardy desert shrub.  According to NPR, sotol is made from wild-growing plants (unlike massively harvested tequila); harvesters hack off the leaves and then carry in the hearts to be fermented and later distilled.

No doubt because of this rude process, sotol has been looked on as a kind of rotgut in Mexico, and has been unknown here.  But seeing that 100 million liters of tequila are consumed in a single year, and that sales of artisanal mezcal are booming, sotol makers have decided to enter the high-end spirit market.

We weren’t thinking about the NPR story when we went to Spec's the other night; in fact we were looking for mezcal.  But the attractive Hacienda de Chihuahua bottle caught our eye, as did the amber tint of the añejo sotol, and we bought it on a whim for around $30.

And we were happy with our selection.  Sotol tastes wild, all right; it tastes of grass, if not hay.  But we were most impressed at how smooth it is; it’s hard to imagine mixing sotol, or diluting it, with anything.  And just when you think it might be too smooth, you get a little highland desert kick at the end.  

Discovering sotol doesn’t make us miss Mexico any less; it just gives us a way to temper our sorrow.   And by the way, the sotol plant grows in the Texas Hill Country, so the local variation could be on the same shelf as all those Texas vodkas before long.  

Sample the movie playing at the MFAH

When El Bulli closed last summer, we didn’t shed a tear.  It wasn’t as if we were ever going to actually tuck into a meal there—we had about as much chance of becoming an astronaut as of scoring a reservation (you know the numbers—they had 8 thousand available reservations annually, for which they received a million or so requests).  

But if we didn’t shed a tear, we did heave a sigh.  It felt like a very unique kind of light had gone out in the world.  Sure, the El Bulli Foundation lives on, but for us with our limited imaginations, it’s hard to understand what they’re going to do there, and how their experiments will connect with the world.  (The videos at the above link aren’t very helpful, even if you speak Spanish.  The last one, with its images of earnest young stagiaires handling tiny foodstuffs oh-so-gingerly as the chamber music soars seems painfully pretentious.)

Still, we’re happy to look back at what El Bulli and its resident genius, Ferran Adrià, created.  That is, we’re planning to march on over to the MFAH this weekend to check the documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress.  It’s gotten mixed reviews; some have found it tedious, others utterly gripping, but we’re intrigued by the approach German director Gereon Wetzel took.  

There are plenty of articles about the doc floating around the internet, but this one from Canada’s National Post is our favorite.  Wetzel proclaims that he’s not a gourmand—or even a “foodie”—and that he was more interested in Adrià’s approach to his work, and in his process, than in the food, or the experience of dining at El Bulli.  

Wetzel says, “We wanted to portray in the film the fact that ideas don’t fall from the sky.  Creativity is hard work.”  The article states that the film contains no interviews, no explanations from Adrià.  The viewer is supposed to come to understand how El Bulli functioned simply by watching its people at work.

We’ll happily check out the film, but we’ll never have the experience that Wetzel and his crew enjoyed after wrapping up the shoot:  a five-hour meal at El Bulli.  “It was like nothing I could possibly put into words,” Wetzel said.  

Maybe we will have to break out our hankies after all.