I Really Wouldn't Eat That

Grilled Oysters

2007-04-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

One of the best and most unusual dishes in New Orleans is the grilled oyster: an oyster, on the half shell, grilled over an open flame. Very simple; amazingly good. And very popular in NOLA. Drago's in Fat City is probably the most famous practitioner of the art form, and you can watch the cooks shucking and sliding the oysters onto the grill from the bar area; great entertainment, and delicious bar food. I don't know if it's a New Orleans original, or whether perhaps the Croatian oystermen who founded so many of New Orleans' great oyster joints (Drago's, Uglesich's, etc.) came up with it. Doesn't matter. Delicious.

But very difficult to find in Houston. (Gilhooley's is the best-known exception.) Fortunately, with Gulf oysters cheap and delicious and easily had, you can make them yourself. I drove down to Captain Wick's, in Seabrook, and bought a 100-count sack of fresh San Leon oysters for $20. (That's a fine deal, by the way, for briny, plump oysters from the best spot on the Texas coast.) Then I made a basic garlic butter sauce with minced raw garlic, melted butter, olive oil, red chili flakes, black pepper, and a little Tony Chachere's. Shuck the oysters, place them half-shell down on the grill, and baste with a little sauce. Once the edges curl and the oysters plump up, they done. A little Parmesan to finish is optional -- but make sure it's the cheapo fake Parmesan in the green can. (I don't know why that's so important, but it is.)

(Thanks to houseguest extraordinaire Mo for the pic.)

Boiled Crawfish

2007-03-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

As most crawfish fans on the Gulf Coast know, we are now in high crawfish season, and 2007 is looking like one of the best seasons in years. Tons of fat crawfish at low prices have been a boon to Louisiana farmers and mudbug eaters everywhere. As we get ready for our own annual crawfish boil later this month, I thought I'd mention a few places that have been turning out good mudbugs around town:

Pappadeaux isn't my favorite Cajun/New Orleans-themed restaurant, to be honest, but they do a mean crawfish boil, as we found out on Mardi Gras night this year, when we dropped by the Richmond Avenue location. Spicy, deeply flavorsome crawfish dusted with Tony Chachere's lit a nice fire on the lips and in the belly. The only complaint was that the crawfish were unusually small for this year's batch, but they were cooked perfectly and proved easy to extract from their shells. The boiled red potatoes and corn on the cob are also excellent, totally drenched in flavor and spice. (Pappadeaux also has consistently excellent raw oysters, though rarely as good as Goode Company's.)

Floyd's Kitchen, on the other hand, had giant, fat crawfish but disappointingly little flavor. Floyd's could use a boost in their boil, but they can't be faulted for the quality of the bugs. (Floyd's also serves some of the flat-out best fried oysters I have ever eaten -- a subject for a later post. But don't go without ordering some.)

Ragin' Cajun is dependable: good crawfish in good boil. They won't change your world, but you can't go wrong, either.

But, just to annoy you, I should mention that we stopped in for dinner at Franky & Johnny's while passing through New Orleans last weekend. There's just nowhere in Houston that matches F&J for crawfish, I'm afraid. They manage the best balance of size, flavor, and cooking time, to produce a slow-burn heat and rich, buttery flavor at an excellent price. Well off the tourist trail for most NOLA visitors, F&J's divey location on Tchoupitoulas turns out some of the best home cooking in the city, as well as some of the best Uptown people watching. There's also a menacingly enticing "bowling" game in the bar area that managed to wound both my children while we waited for a table. (Their father's contributory negligence pretty much blew any likelihood of recovery in court.)

Sichuan Cuisine

2007-03-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

It's an odd restaurant that I really, really like but won't recommend to everyone. Sichuan Cuisine, at 9114 Bellaire Boulevard in Houston's Chinatown, is definitely one of those restaurants. Sichuan Cuisine is an often-brilliant, always-authentic hole in the wall in the vast Diho Square shopping center on Bellaire, with a clear focus on regional Sichuan cooking.

Sichuan cuisine features a lot of poultry, a lot of pig, and a good amount of freshwater fish (owing to Sichuan's landlocked status). Oh, and small mountains of hot peppers. Pepperheads of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your stomach linings! Sichuan Cuisine deploys spice with abandon, but rarely overwhelms the flavor of the food. The sheer number of peppers sometimes seems intended for comical effect: the ChongQin Chicken, for instance, is literally buried beneath an inch of dried red peppers.

But the carpets of capsaicin are moderated somewhat by the nearly ubiquitous Sichuan peppercorns, actually the husk of a small seed from the prickly ash tree. The peppercorns have a bright, lemony flavor with a peppery finish and add an intense aroma to the food. But the flavor is only one component of the peppercorn's appeal; equally important to Sichuan cooking is the almost novocaine-like numbness that the peppercorn imparts. Coupled with the heat of the chile peppers, the two create a sensation called "ma la," or hot-numb, which is the signature of Sichuan cooking.

Sichuan Cuisine is really into ma la. The appetizers offer a good introduction. Dan Dan Noodles ($1.95) are deliciously slippery, udon-like noodles in a soy-based sauce with fresh basil, peanuts, and chiles. The noodles offer a delicate kick at the end, and a hint of numbness. My five-year-old took a bite of the Dan Dan Noodles and announced, "Dad, we can come here all the time."

More pronounced are the Dragon Wontons ($2.95), flat pork-filled dumplings in a red-oil sauce. The wontons are excellent, and leave a tingling numbness on your lips. Also outstanding are the Chengdu Dumplings and the Crispy Yam Cakes with Sesame ($2.95), a cousin of the sesame bean balls so popular at dim sum palaces.

But it's in the main courses that the ma la comes into its own. ChongQin Chicken ($7.50) -- tiny cubes of fried chicken dusted with salt and Sichuan peppercorns, then smothered under dried red chiles -- is utterly addictive, even better after a night in the refrigerator. Twice-Cooked Pork ($6.95) is outstanding: chunks of pork belly (that's right - bacon, baby!) boiled and then sauteed with leeks, garlic, chiles and peppercorns. Outrageously delicious and decadent, and an Atkins Diet superstar if ever there were one. Any of the entrees will feed two or three adults, easily.

The Boiled Slice Fish came recommended to me, despite its, um, less than compelling name. It's an interesting dish but not for everyone; perhaps not for me. Reminiscent of a Vietnamese hot pot, the fish arrives piping hot in a soup-like sauce of chilis, garlic, and Sichuan peppercorns. The taste -- powerful, hot, and garlicky as hell -- is delicious, but the unctuous oiliness that works well with the restaurant's stir-fried dishes is kind of overwhelming here.

The service is, like many Chinese restaurants in town, brusque but functional. The first time I took the family to the restaurant, we actually received excellent (and friendly) service; familiarity has, I fear, bred contempt, or perhaps we've lost our novelty as The White Family in The Corner. But the focus is on the food at Sichuan Cuisine, and the food is outstanding.

Max's Wine Dive

2007-03-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

Max's Wine Dive has nearly every indicia of hipness. Seedy-but-upcoming-neighborhood? Check. Cute bleach-blonde hostess in a 1984 Go-Gos dress? Check. Deafening noise level? Check. Irreverent menus, waitrons in funky T-shirts, and an interesting wine list? Check.

But then.... a few kinks emerge. First you notice that the hipster crowd is actually a little older than you first thought -- in fact, they're considerably older than they're dressed. When their Razr V3s ring, it might be a friend calling to meet them for drinks; more likely, it's the babysitter asking when they're coming home.

Then you notice that the top-volume music you've been humming along to happily is oddly reminiscent of a high school dance. But not a 2007 high school dance -- your high school dance, circa 1989. Yes, that's "Bigmouth Strikes Again," but no, you're not seventeen. You're married with kids and a Volvo, and that's a good thing, because most of the food here is priced well out of any self-respecting hipster's budget.

Max's Wine Dive is really a carefully-constructed simulacrum of hipness designed to appeal to yuppies in their thirties who've developed a taste for wine, but prefer to think of themselves as unpretentious and cool. Hey, who doesn't? The wine list is interesting, and the policies progressive: the house will open any bottle on the list if you agree to purchase two glasses or more.

The food is more retrograde. Filled with "fun" updates on Southern dishes and some bistro faves, Max's success rate is spotty at best. Frites (f/k/a french fries) are a decent snack, and arrive hot and properly salty in paper cones with a chipotle mayonnaise. A bowl of mussels topped with garlic, shallots, and hot peppers nestled in a creamy, citrus-y broth was fantastic; there's not enough bread in the world to soak up the juices left at the bottom.

But the appetizers generally set you up for disappointment. Max's fabled "Haute Dog," an unimpressive wiener lost amidst a sea of bland chili and smothered fries, was an unappealing, sloppy mess. I have no idea what goes through the mind of a Texas chef who puts out tasteless chili. Texans are primed to appreciate a spicy, flavorful bowl of red; why do you disappoint them? How hard is it to make a decent chili? The best part of the "Haute Dog" is the homemade pickled jalapeno slices that litter the plate. Skip the dog and order a side of those.

Fried chicken was good, crispy and thin-skinned, if unnaturally sweet. My friend ordered the Kobe beef burger, which arrived wet, red, and barely warm, like a newborn pig. Notably, the crowd of people nominally sitting at the table behind us completely ignored their food when it arrived. They were too busy partying with the folks at the bar.

As Robb Walsh points out in his (generally admiring) review, even the better dishes aren't really well-suited to accompany wines. The emphasis on fried foods and pickled things -- while nothing to be ashamed of, especially when done properly -- isn't really conducive to sharing with wines.

So, take Max's Wine Dive for what it is: a loud wine bar with loud food. But if you're really interested in wine -- or food -- you're probably better off somewhere else.

Luling City Market

2006-10-31T12:06:00.000-08:00

No, not the one on Richmond. I was driving back from a mediation in Laredo and stopped off in Luling for lunch. It would be an overstatement to say that I drove (instead of flew) to Laredo just so that I could hit Luling for lunch, but one of the nice parts about driving around central Texas is the ready availability of great smoked meats in nearly every small town.

But strangely, I was disappointed by City Market's meats. The atmosphere was great -- a happy storefront on a friendly, well-maintained block downtown -- but the pork ribs were overcooked and dry. (Well, one rib was excellent, but the others -- perhaps from a different slab? -- were just plain overdone.) The hot links had good flavor, but paled in comparison to Smitty's. The brisket was pretty good, moist and smoky, but couldn't do much to raise the overall level of the 'cue. Maybe City Market simply suffered by comparison to my road trip earlier this month to nearby Lockhart, or maybe I caught them on a bad day?

Fred's Italian Corner

2006-10-31T11:34:00.000-08:00

Certainly, it's nice to have chef Marco Wiles and others working busily to maintain a presence on the Houston dining scene for serious, authentic Italian cooking. But foodies' entirely-understandable love for guanciale and pizza con tonno shouldn't mean that there's not a place for good, old-fashioned Italian-American fare. As Allison Cook notes in her blog, Craiganale's -- a longtime standby for courthouse lawyers downtown -- has recently expanded to a more full-size location in Midtown, demonstrating that Houstonians, as much as anyone, recognize the need for a good meatball sandwich.

In the same vein, Fred's Italian Corner has been flying the red-sauce flag for nearly a quarter-century now, serving the Rice University area from their humble abode in a strip mall at Holcombe and Greenbriar. Fred's is as genuine a neighborhood joint as you'll find anywhere, locals walking in with their families on a Friday night for chicken cacciatore and spaghetti with meatballs in marinara sauce. There are always a couple of tables taken by Rice students on dates, and the friendly bustle on a weekend evening lends a communal feel which can often be hard to come by in Houston restaurants.

Obviously, to be worth a damn in the red-sauce business, your marinara had better be good. And Fred's is good, rich and satisfying without being too sweet (the usual failing of Italian-American sauces). The spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, basil and anchovies is very good (though the pasta tends to be a bit overdone, which, sadly, is an almost universal problem in restaurants like Fred's), as are the meatballs and Italian sausage. Wines are unimpressive but inexpensive, which all you could reasonably ask for. Lasagna is rich and well-cooked, served in its own little chafing dish.

Empanadas

2006-10-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

So I was thinking about empanadas -- the tasty, stuffed-pocket dumplings popular throughout Latin America -- after trying to interest my boys in the beef empanadas at Goode Company's "Armadillo Palace" on Kirby. (Which, for the record, is a surprisingly negligible food location, despite some decent venison chili and the tasty aforementioned beef empanadas.) The Armadillo's version are pretty good, but they invite comparison with the much more impressive seafood empanadas at Goode Company Seafood, around the corner on Westpark: those are spicy and flavorful, with chunks of peppers and crawfish tails. Good stuff.

But Houston is awash in good empanadas. One place definitely worth checking out is Marine's, at 3227 Hillcroft in west Houston. Marine's, a Colombian mom'n'pop kitchen with a friendly atmosphere, claims 45 different stuffings ranging from the usual savory meats (beef, chicken, pork, etc.) to numerous sweet and fruit fillings. (Marine's also makes a mean arroz con pollo, and there's usually a soccer game playing on the TV.)

Somewhat more expensive (but still a relatively good deal, for an appetizer) is the "empanadita" plate at Churrascos. Chef Michael Cordua's little empanadas (usually a selection of beef, chicken, and shrimp with cheese, together with chile and cilantro dipping sauces) are more refined than Marine's, perhaps, but still pretty unassuming. And tasty.

I've heard excellent things about Marini's Empanada House in Katy, though I haven't had a chance to try it out yet; the problem, of course, being that if/when I get the craving for empanadas, there are just too many options available in the twenty miles between my house and Marini's. But the day will come.

Central Market's Black Pepper and Prosciutto Ficelle

2006-10-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

Obviously, Central Market is a bad and evil place, haunted by uneasonably high prices (Three dollars for a pepper? Seriously? Just because it's from Holland?) and addled richies from River Oaks.

So you shouldn't go there at all. But, if you did, you should buy a black pepper and prosciutto ficelle from their bakery section. They are simply outstanding: dense, intensely chewy skinny demi-baguettes with big chunks of salty prosciutto and a pleasant peppery heat. Whole Foods tried very briefly to compete with Central Market on this point, but theirs was bland, soft, and just plain uncommitted. If you can, bribe someone at the front door to buy one for you (the way you did for six-packs in high school). If that doesn't work, you may have to go in the store -- but don't say I didn't warn you. And don't visit the olive bar. It's a crushing disappointment.

Van Loc (Is Not As Good as Mai's)

2006-10-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

This isn't as much a full-fledged blog entry as a simple observation that Van Loc is just not as good as its supposed rival, Mai's. Sorry. You know it's true. The spring rolls? Not as fresh, not as well-wrapped. The barbecued pork? Fatty and not as flavorful. It's just not as good. Not. As. Good.

Schilo's - Twilight of the Hot Dog Gods?

2006-10-12T21:35:00.000-07:00

Schilo's is not in Houston, and, though I like the service and the feel of the joint a lot, I've never thought they had particuarly memorable food.

But I was in San Antonio the other day for a short deposition, and I stopped into Schilo's for a quick lunch.

I ordered the "Krautdog."

When it arrived, I said, "Whoa."

The waitress asked, nervously, if everything was okay.

"Uh-huh," I murmured, transfixed by the double frankfurter blanketed with fragrant, delicate sauerkraut. "Am good."

The hot dogs were butterflied and a deep red color. The smell coming from them was just...delicious. I thought to myself, "No way is this going to taste as good as it looks. Or as good as it smells."

But then it was BETTER. It was outrageous. It was the most German-tasting hot dog I've had outside of Der Fatherland. Much of my seventh-grade German came back to me. My grandmother, Ida Kiesewetter, seemed to call my name. When I closed my eyes, I saw edelweiss.

Then I felt guilty. I'm very, very snotty about hot dogs. I have a carefully-constructed personal hierarchy of frankfurters (crowned, obviously, by the best hot dog in the world: Rutt's Hut) and I was not expecting to have to rearrange it when I stopped into Schilo's for a quick lunch. Everything is now disarray and confusion. Gray's Papaya may have been bumped to fourth. Further research must be done to see if this was a fluke; maybe I was hungrier than I thought? More on this later.

Fung's Kitchen

2006-10-12T20:30:00.000-07:00

New York's Chinatown is justly famous for its dim sum palaces, places like Mandarin Court and 20 Mott Street whose combination of hostile service and rolling carts filled with dazzling delicacies prompts even hungover hipsters to rouse themselves early on Saturday mornings and make the trek to Mott and Canal. One of the things that makes New York's restaurant scene so vital is the city's hugely diverse population. Rather than having, for example, just enough Chinese residents to support a few Chinese restaurants, New York has an enormous population of Chinese from all regions of that country, and they help to maintain several competitive and vibrant eating districts, most notably on the Lower East Side and in Flushing. So when you go into a good Chinese restaurant in New York, you can -- and should -- find a sizeable proportion of knowledgeable Chinese patrons eating there.

Our hometown, Houston, is also amazingly diverse; by population, it is the second-most diverse city in the country, after NYC. Fittingly, Houston also has a vibrant, if typically far-flung, dim sum scene. Ocean Palace and Kim Son have attaracted huge weekend crowds for years with their rolling carts of dumplings, chicken feet, gai lan, and other specialties. For a long time, I was convinced that Kim Son's Stafford restaurant had the best weekend dim sum. Led by a brilliant dim sum chef, Kim Son -- a Houston Vietnamese standby -- still has an outstanding service, but Kim Son has now fallen, in my hierarchy, to a worthy second place. Fung's Kitchen is number one.

Fung's, located near Bellaire Boulevard just off the Southwest Freeway, is located with the usual Houston charm between a grim collection of office towers and ten lanes of highway traffic. Inside, however, Fung's is bright, clean, and nicely decorated (a significant departure from many New York dim sum palaces, which tend toward the "gritty reality" school of decor) with decorative Buddhas and functional fishtanks.

The fishtanks are critical, in fact. Although nearly everything on the dim sum carts is delicious, the seafood takes pride of place. Shrimp dumplings (there are at least three kinds) are pristine and crunchy, with no iodine flavor of the sort one often runs into in Houston restaurants (Chinese and otherwise). Clams in black bean sauce are outstanding, as is the jellyfish salad: delicate slices of jellyfish mixed with lightly pickled cucumbers and black duck eggs. The steamed buns range from okay (chicken buns) to excellent (barbecue pork buns). And, breaking with tradition, Fung's offers not only the de rigeur sweet sesame balls (delicious, but , to be honest, not quite as good as Kim Son's) but also a more savory version with black sesame seeds. The Chinese broccoli (gai lan -- actually a kind of kale) is perfect and plentiful, as it should be at any good Chinese restaurant.

But dim sum is ultimately about the dumplings, and the dumplings at Fung's are spectacular. In addition to the usual beef and pork xiu mai, there are shrimp-and-pork dumplings; chicken dumplings; shrimp and shark fin; and a variety of vegetable dumplings filled with different greens. The steamed ginger and beef tripe (round and dumpling-ish, though technically not a dumpling) is excellent.

Perversely, my normally highly suspicious children love the food at Fung's, though they remain unwilling to sample the chicken feet. The upside-down sticky rice with pork sausage is a serious favorite, and recently our waitress introduced another crowd-pleaser: "Japanese Sprite." It's a soft drink, of course, but it comes in a heavy glass bottle with a marble that doubles as bottlecap and entertainment. The drink, actually "Ramune" (almost embarassingly, a Japanese phonetic transliteration of 'lemonade') is fizzy and sweet with a taste reminiscent of Japanese candy.

So what if you're not required to take the D train and trudge through garbage-strewn streets to stand in line for an un-air-conditioned seat with total strangers? The dim sum is just as good, and just as varied, and the crowds -- 80% or more of whom are very happy Asian families -- are just as happy. If it makes you feel better, you can always take the bus home afterward.

Lankford Grocery

2006-09-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

At the risk of sounding like a moral relativist, the "best hamburger" is genuinely a personal choice. Some people prefer their patties thin, while others like a well-crusted hunk of beef; Texans generally seek out a traditional complement of mustard, onions, lettuce and tomato, while some prefer their burgers tarted up with silliness like barbecue sauce or guacamole.

But everyone, I think, will agree that a great hamburger must taste distinctively beefy. There are lots of things to complain about McDonalds, but the biggest must be that their hamburgers taste nothing like cow. They're kind of cheesey and greasy, which is fine; but there's little to suggest that any part of them ever mooed or milked.

It's the beefiness factor (BF) that ultimately elevates Lankford Grocery, purveyor of Houston's finest hamburgers, above its competition. Lankford Grocery, a dumpy and well-loved shack hidden away in what used to be known as the Fourth Ward (now a yuppie ghetto on the outskirts of Midtown), serves a variety of startling good food, but none better or more justly renowned than their burgers.

Lankford offers burgers in three sizes (single, double, and, humorously, a triple-patty version -- over a pound and a half of meat). Each burger is beautifully made, which is to say they're course-ground, crudely-shapen, and cooked over high heat to give them a nice blackening. No efforts have been made to avoid the grease inherent in good ground chuck, and it soaks through the wax paper on which the burger is served, and leaves an enticing sheen on the bun. The meat is well-flavored, beefy and tender. The default toppings are the usual mustard, pickles, lettuce, tomato and onion, and there's nothing else you'd need to improve it. The cheeseburger comes with a patriotic slice of yellow cheddar thoroughly melted over the patty.

(What -- what -- is up with burger joints that can't be bothered to melt the cheese on their cheeseburgers? A cold slice of cheese can ruin an otherwise outstanding burger, and there's just no reason for it. The secret? Put the cheese on the burger before it's done cooking. Voila! Why is that so hard? I was in Austin the other day and grabbed a quick bite at Posse East, a perfectly respectable beer joint and burger bar on campus. The cheeseburger was -- or would have been -- delicious, but for the two slices of refrigerator-cold and gummy Kraft Singles that conspired to ruin each bite until I removed the nasty things and flung them back in the basket. Seriously, people. Brain surgery it ain't.)

There's a good argument to be made for the double burger at Lankford. The sight of the poor, struggling bun vainly trying to contain both patties leaves no doubt that this burger, more than any other, is about the meat. Yes, it's certainly bad for you. We're talking about a solid pound of greasy hamburger that sets up a permanent refugee camp in your colon within minutes of eating it. But you can rationalize it by saying, "Yes, this is a bad thing. But it is also genuinely delicious and hedonistic. I do not smoke opium. I do not spend my days in silk pajamas, reclining in Hef's grotto. This is my only opportunity to revel in a purely aesthetic experience at lunch today, and I will not regret this decision at the end of my life, however much sooner that day may now arrive."

The sides, if you care, are also delicious. The onion rings are thick-cut but not (overly) greasy, and the "Tex-Mex" -- batter-fried onions and jalapenos -- is also outstanding. Regulars go for the pleasingly crunchy tater tots. There is also a small variety of burger toppings available, beyond the usual mustard, lettuce, etc. The Firehouse burger, for instance, is made with hot peppers in the meat, habanero salsa, and hot mustard. Which is fine, if you're into cheap thrills. But that's like visiting the Grand Canyon and insisting on bungee-jumping off the side. Surely the sublimity of the main attraction is enough?

Best Bayou City Gumbo

2006-09-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

Just a short post, more of a question than an opinion: Who makes the best bowl of gumbo in town? Houston has long-standing cultural and demographic ties to Louisiana which have greatly benefited our local cuisine, one benefit being a relative abundance of good gumbo. Treebeard's, the dependable downtown lunch joint, serves a creditable chicken and andouille version with a strong celery flavor. Soul on the Bayeaux (3717 Dowling, at Alabama) has a mean, chocolate-brown seafood gumbo complete with crab legs and the kind of depth that comes from an expert roux. Ragin' Cajun does a lot of things very well, but, sadly, gumbo ain't one of 'em. Where else should a gumbo-eater go? IRWET wants to know.

"Telephone Thai"

2006-09-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

Why is it somehow preferable to be abused than ignored? Or is that just me? Well, it can't just be me, judging by the dozens of people who crowd into Kanomwan -- known to those who love it as "Telephone Thai" -- every day for lunch. These are people with jobs, cars, and plenty lunch options; why would they drive out of their way to be abused by a scowling Thai fellow in a sleeveless dress shirt?

In a word: S1. That's why. Kanomwan's tom yum goong (or "S1" to aficianados) is worth significant mistreatment. The first tom yum goong I'd ever had was at a little Vietnamese/Thai restaurant on 7th Avenue in Brooklyn called The Lemongrass. It was (I thought) spicy, intense, and intensely hot, with exactly two shrimp and a heady fish-sauce reek. I thought it was one of the best soups I'd ever tasted. I hadn't had S1 yet, obviously. Telephone Thai's version puts all others -- in America, at least -- to shame. S1 is garnet-red with pepper flakes and riddled with inedible aromatics like kaffir lime leaf, galangal root, and something strongly resembling tree bark. Shove past all of that to get the fresh, impeccably-cooked shrimp and the tiny mushrooms that have absorbed the broth. Fresh rice is served (and consumed) with the S1 as a matter of necessity; whereas weaker tom yum goongs, like those at Nit Noi and Morningside Thai, are served without rice, S1 is barely edible without it. (It's like ordering cafe at Cafe de Monde without the au lait -- it might well kill you.) S1 is a, if not the, Platonic Thai dish in Houston. It's particularly good if you get there for the second lunch seating (i.e., after 12:30), when it's been simmering and reducing steadily and achieves a ragu-like thickness and intensity. We arrived at 1:15 once, and my boss began to sweat so profusely that he had to stand up and walk around the restaurant in mid-S1, as the other customers mocked him.

The rest of the menu is nearly as good. Gai pad prik, or H6, is a spicy stir-fry of chicken with cashews in a sweet chili paste. A little sweet for some tastes, H6 is a much-loved standard at Telephone Thai and, with S1, probably constitutes 50% of the dishes ordered at lunch. The curries are very good, particularly S10, the green chicken curry with bamboo shoots, which has a slow-building but intense burn that leaves your lips tingling. For the geuninely brave, H1 -- available with beef, chicken, or pork -- offers an adulterated chili experience: simply ground meat, Thai basil, fish sauce and chilis (as many as you can stand). Order it "Thai-hot" if you want to make Ute, the owner, crack a smile. Please note it isn't a particularly friendly smile.

There are a couple of missteps. The pad thai is bland, colorless, and unloved -- the Governor Perry of Thai food. The spring rolls and egg rolls are just okay, and the tom khai gai (chicken and coconut milk soup) needs more zing (i.e., more lime juice and fish sauce). But overall, Kanomwan stands tall among Houston Thai restaurants for its bright, vibrant flavors.

So why does the owner apparently hate it so much? Why is he so grouchy all the time, despite hundreds of lawyers, businessmen, judges, and engineers trekking out into Eastwood every day to buy his food? Is it just a shtick? Maybe so.

(Aside: On the old Comedy Central show, "Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist," there was a Catskills-type comic who complained that every time he auditioned for a TV pilot, the studio execs told him that his routine was "too shticky." "You know what I hear, when someone says my routine is 'too shticky'?" he said. "I hear, 'We hate the Jews.'")

To be fair, the owner is borderline polite to most women, and downright friendly to children. But those of us who know and love him recognize that that's just an act designed to make the rest of us feel even worse, as though he were specifically scorning us. And we love it.

Kanomwan: 736 Telephone Road, Houston, Texas 77023.

Fast Food in the Buckeye State

2006-08-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

Out of town again this past weekend, I was able to indulge in one of my favorite (if not healthiest) pastimes: sampling other regions' fast food chains. It's hard to get interested in the big national chains (McDonald's, Taco Bell, The Hated Burger King, etc.) but the smaller chains can be as quirky and interesting as mom'n'pop shops.

Upon landing in Columbus, we asked the pleasant-if-none-too-quick teenager at the Alamo rental desk for directions to the nearest White Castle. Columbus is, of course, the ancestral home to America's finest mini-burger chain, and we didn't waste give minutes in our pursuit of a sack of sliders. (I say "we," but of course The Wife ate only one burger, bitched loudly about it, and refused to eat another.) I hadn't had a slider in about five years, which is right on schedule, from a cardiologist's perspective. White Castle sticks to its classic formula: small, thin patties covered with onion bits and steamed into the soft, freshly-baked bun with just a pickle to liven the deal. (Though, of course, you can aske for ketchup or mustard or both.) Why mess with perfection? Admittedly, they don't taste a whole lot like meat, or even like hamburgers, as we commonly understand the term. But they fulfill a certain need. (As do the "chicken rings," but that's another story.) Verdict: Awesomely delicious, if not, you know, particularly healthy.

If you ever listen to Astros games on the radio, you're no doubt familiar with the mellifluous tones and dry wit of Milo Hamilton, one of the best play-by-play guys in the business. Milo has certain likes and dislikes about the cities he visits, and one of his peeves about Cincinnati -- Queen City to her fans -- is Skyline Chili, an institution in southern Ohio which Milo once denounced on air as "the worst thing I've ever eaten."

Naturally, this was like a red flag to a bull for your loyal blogger. We had to visit. And we did: we dropped in on the Lebanon, OH branch for a late lunch on the way to our friends' wedding. Suffice to say, this ain't your typical Texas bowl of red. Skyline's "original secret recipe chili" (as it's referred to exclusively in the menu) is a thin, greyish sauce with finely-ground "beef" and a distinctly sweet, oddly Christmas-y flavor. There are, apparently, two classic ways to enjoy Skyline Chili: over spaghetti with finely-shredded cheddar cheese and onions (a "classic three way," which sounds dirty) or on a small coney-style hot dog. As the relationship columnists advise, the three-way is a terrible idea. Mushy spaghetti with a grey, cinnamon-flavored meat gruel on top just isn't worth the long-term damage it causes. The "Cheese Mett Coneys" are better, if you scrape off the top two inches of cheese (leaving you with a still-robust solid inch of cheese) and try not to think about Nathan's or James Coney Island. And the restaurant itself -- with counter service and 400-lb. waitstaff -- is actually rather pleasant and quite clean for a fast food joint. Verdict: Worth a visit, if only to see what passes for chili in the heartland.

NOLA - One Year Later

2006-08-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note about my visit to New Orleans this past weekend. There's no question that the city is still suffering from the after-effects of the worst catastrophe in its history. Too many empty buildings, too few people on the streets (even for August, traditionally the city's quietest month), and, frankly, too few black New Orleanians. New Orleans has for centuries been a showplace of African-American culture: music, literature, and (especially) cuisine. We have to hope that the city and the state and/or federal governments figure out how to restore, and improve, the city's housing, employment, and educational infrastructure in time to lure back a sizeable proportion of those who've left.

Anyway, the food: We were there too briefly to do any kind of a widespread survey, but the results are encouraging. Napolelon House still serves its delicious muffalettas, rich with olive salad and garnished with excellent olives and pickles (and a kick-ass sazerac cocktail). Plum Street Snoballs is still the king: I had my usual lime/plum combo, and The Wife took a chance on something call "Orchid Cream" flavor, which turned out to be delicious. Finally, Galatoire's still packs them in, with the usual admixture of tourists, lawyers, pols, anniversary parties and local gentry. Hank -- all of two years old -- downed several oysters en brochette, and liked the oysters Rockefeller so much that he literally licked the oyster shell clean. His big brother ate a bowl of turtle soup and pronounced it, "the best soup [he] ever had in his life." (For the record, his dad thought it was much better than the last time he'd had the soup at Galatoire's; nearly a rival to Commander's Palace's own Platonic version.)

I can't tell you how important it is that you go to New Orleans now and eat to your heart's content. It's important economically: now, more than ever, the city is dependent on tourist dollars. Every restaurant you visit will be encouraged to hire more cooks and waiters, which in turn will help inspire people to move back. Every club is paying attention to see whether people will come in to listen to music and buy drinks, or whether they should hang it up. It's important politically: you probably don't have a better way to show that you, at least, haven't abandoned New Orleans. And it's important to preserve the most accomplished and distinctive regional cuisine in America.

Follow up: There's an excellent piece in the New York Times food section today about the struggle to rebuild New Orleans' restaurant scene in the wake of the hurricane. It's hard to imagine being a small-business owner and having to deal with so many problems at once: a greatly-diminished workforce, diminished customer base, supply interruptions, negative publicity. Thank God so many are doing it anyway.

Lunch at 17

2006-08-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

The first nice thing to say about 17, the restaurant at the Alden Hotel downtown, is that they offer both lime and lemon wedges with your iced tea. How hard is that? Obviously, lime tastes better than lemon in iced tea, and people who disagree with that bedrock truth have lost their minds and/or their tastebuds, but why not offer a choice? If nothing else, it's a simple litmus test that will tell the waiter a great deal about their customer's taste and sophistication.

Anyway, the second "nice" thing to say about 17 is that far too few people eat lunch there, and the service and attention is accordingly well-focused on those who do visit 17 for their delicious, seasonal American cuisine. That ain't always the case; oftentimes, for no discernible reason, half-empty restaurants have even worse service than a hopping dining room. The waiters just seem to have given up. At 17, the maitre d' is friendly and quick, the waiters are attentive without overdoing it, and the room is handsomely decorated (if a bit quiet).

More importantly, the food is extremely good: along with Bank, 17 offers the best high-end lunch available downtown. After squeezing lime wedges in their iced tea, discerning diners are given a couple tiny but hot and yeasty rolls and left to peruse the pleasantly short lunch menu. Befitting a summertime menu, there was an outstanding heirloom tomato salad: no muss, no fuss, just five spectacular slices of tomato (red, orange, yellow, and -- best of all -- a green/black slice with a pleasantly acidic bite) dressed minimally with sea salt and a scattering of tiny fresh oregano leaves. Not even any olive oil, a nearly daring touch. Fortunately, the tomatoes are good enough to stand on their own. Go now; eat tomato.

There's a standing "Chef's Noodles" entree, which varies every day and is essentially a pasta special, varying from Asian noodle dishes to Italian pasta. On my most recent visit, the pasta special was pappardelle with tiny shrimp, a basil pesto and fresh tomato chunks. The shrimp were cooked perfectly -- an accomplishment that shockingly few Houston restaurants seem to have figured out -- and went beautifully with the not-overly-assertive pesto sauce. The dish had far too much butter, which is a typical restaurant trick, but the reason so many chefs indulge in the trick is that, well, butter tastes good. And it tasted good here.

My boss bought lunch today (not for me, really, but for the other guests at our table; I was just a free rider) and reported that his gazpacho was also delicious, and it bore a close resemblance to the red, rich tomatoes in my aforementioned salad. 17 clearly has a hook into a pretty good produce supplier, and it's hard to think of a more important relationship for a restaurant to have.

Anyway, get thee to 17 for lunch, preferably on your boss' tab, before (1) the tomato season ends, and/or (2) the lack of customers knocks out the lunch seating at 17.

Sassafras Ice Cream

2006-08-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

This is nothing more than a open letter/prayer to the ice cream gods at Amy's Ice Cream on Shepherd to bring back, if only for a day, the sassafras ice cream they featured two weeks ago. Pure white, rich as Croesus, and with the most intense root beer tang you've ever encountered. It must be what Mr. Barq and Mr. Hires eat for dessert every day in the Great Beyond. Bring it back. I will pay any price. I'm not proud.

Mandola's Deli

2006-08-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

As a transplanted Yankee, one of the first and most difficult transitions to be made upon moving to Houston is saying goodbye to what you knew as "street food." Growing up in Philadelphia (you can pretty easily substitute "New York," "Baltimore," or "Providence," here), street food was down'n'dirty, often Italian, and simply spectacular.

Generally, we're talking about sandwiches here: cheesesteaks, hoagies, roast pork sandwiches, strombolis, grinders, etc. Philly gets some renown for inventing the cheesesteak, but that's sort of like an art historian giving Italy credit for the Mona Lisa: Sure, no doubt, but it's hardly the beginning or end of the story. It's a fair comparison. In some ways, Philly street food is the Louvre of the sandwich world. There's almost too much variety and quality to take in, from Dalessandro's Steaks to Tony Luke's to Tommy Dinic's Roast Pork in the Reading Terminal Market to Lee's Hoagie House.

One of the best things about eating Italian street food in Philly is the sense of an "authentic" experience -- the same thing that gets BBQ writers all bunged up when they stumble on some doublewide outside Llano with a pit in the back. Basically, it's an elevated form of tourism: the thrill of partaking in someone else's life and culture through the medium of food. You can sort of fool yourself that, for the time it takes to eat your lunch, you are Italian/Mexican/German/Texan/etc., or that you at least appreciate a delicious part of what makes that culture so interesting.

Houston is full of such thrills, especially in the areas of Mexican food, soul food, barbeque, and Salvadoran food. But not so much with your old-line "ethnic" foods. There ain't much authenticity in a visit to Olive Garden ("Hospitaliano" notwithstanding) or even Da Marco. You're in an Italian restaurant in Houston in 2006, and that's exactly what it feels like. The over-under on the number of actual, genuine Italians working at the joint is 1. Take the under.

That's what makes Mandola's Deli, at 4105 Leeland in Eastwood, so much fun. Mandola's Deli is not in Houston in 2006. It exists in some sort of weird parallel dimension that appears to be Philadelphia, circa 1977. The atmosphere is uncanny: there has been simply no effort to dress it up and make it look like a modern food establishment. It's dark. There are almost no windows (good thing, considering the neighborhood). You stand in an un-reconstructed deli line, and the ladies behind the counter know every customer, and every customer's order (except yours, since you haven't been here before). You seem to be in line with an Italian-American chick you could swear you met on the boardwalk last summer down in Wildwood.

The food sustains the illusion. The meatball po-boy (can we get them to change the name? the dissonance is jarring) is easily the best in Houston, if not Texas. Finely-textured and well-seasoned meatballs with just enough red sauce to moisten the sandwich. Melted mozzarella that doesn't remind you of bathroom caulk. Good, chewy french bread (not quite Amoroso's, but still). There's a fantastic side dish called "Funeral Beans" (green beans with butter, bread crumbs and garlic) and slices of fresh pie. The red sauce is good, as it has to be at a place like this: tart, tomato-y, and distinctive, and (thank you Lord) not too sweet. Go to Mandola's Deli the next time you need a reality check. It's considerably more convenient than traveling to late-seventies South Philadelphia.

Thoughts on Brand Dilution

2006-08-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

This is not a review of the original Ninfa's on Navigation Boulevard. Everyone knows about/has been to the original Ninfa's, so I'm not going to show you pictures of their delightful food or discuss how the (Platonic) Tacos Musicos achieve unparalleled heights of greasy perfections. That's not what this is about. This post is about how spectacularly suck-ass the other locations in the Ninfa's empire can be.

Now, they probably don't all suck. In fact, I happen to know that the location on Kirby isn't terrible, and the one in the Galleria offers the only decent margarita to be had in that retail hellhole. But the Ninfa's at the Park Shops downtown...that, people, is a really bad restaurant. The chips are okay, but the salsa -- particularly the red salsa -- is indisputably from a jar. The caldo xochitl -- at the Navigation original, a clear, deeply-flavored chicken soup fragrant with fresh vegetables and peppers -- is a meek, watery chicken broth with a few chunks of chicken breast huddled at the bottom of the bowl, clearly ashamed of their role in the affair. The whole restaurant shares a similar sense of perpetrating a fraud, as though you'd opened a "Kreuz Market" in a food court and were offering baloney sandwiches with A-1 Sauce to an unsuspecting populace. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Jamaican Beef Patty Alert - Tropicana Grill

2006-07-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

In my younger and more dissolute days, I lived in Brooklyn around the corner from the finest hangover cure known to man. (Just another example of the mysterious ways in which the good Lord looks after us.) On Flatbush Avenue near Grand Army Plaza, there's a tiny bakery called Christie's. Christie's makes and sells The Best Jamaican Beef Patty in New York - a spicy, greasy, flaky bit of goodness tucked inside a buttery lump of coco bread.

Christie's is a bit of a hike if you have the misfortune to be hung over in Houston in, say, July. But there is an acceptable local substitute: the Tropicana Grill at 6521 Bissonnet (near Hillcroft). Homebaked beef and chicken patties are available to go ($1.50 per), and the fresh-baked coco bread makes an excellent companion. Neither the patty nor the bread compares with Christie's, but both are very good. And the folks who run it are very friendly. It's worth a trip just to hear the Jamaican owner valiantly trying to communicate with the Hispanic kitchen help.

Goode Company Barbecue

2006-07-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

It's difficult to talk or write about barbecue without falling into a lot of mystical bullshit. Most people who write about barbecue believe -- or would have you believe they believe -- that all "real" barbecue must be had at a Hill Country pit tended by gruff old Czechs who haven't washed their hands since Anschluss, or else at an black Baptist church where your ribs are doled out by Mother Abigail herself. God knows you couldn't get decent barbecue on, say, the Kirby strip.

Except, of course, that you can. Jim Goode has been dishing up excellent 'cue at his original location at Kirby and 59 for decades now, and of course he's got a lot of hokey Texana in his shop -- stuffed armadillos are sort of de rigeur -- but he doesn't need to, because he does his shit right. He rubs the ribs, brisket, turkey, etc. with a good dry rub and then smokes the shit out of it. Voila! Barbecue. Good barbecue, too.

Now, before you people get your panties in a wad, I'm not saying it's the finest BBQ anywhere in the land. I agree, there's better 'cue to be had in Lockhart and, in fact, in Houston. But let's give credit where it's due. Jim Goode could serve up some boiled, liquid-smoke-tastin' meat these days without any appreciable decline in business (see, e.g., Pizzitola's), but he doesn't.

Let's talk first about what they do right. The brisket's outstanding. There's smokier brisket to be had in town, and more tender brisket, and God knows there's fattier brisket available, but Goode Co. strikes an excellent balance. The ribs are very good, though -- and here I risk sounding like the guy who argues the Beatles went to shit after 'Revolver' -- they used to be better. They're just not as tender as they used to be, and they don't separate from the bone the way the best pork ribs do. Wife reminds me that I'm supposed to be talking about what they do right. Quite correct. They do a mean pot of beans, and the barbecue sauce is simply outstanding. Smokey, spicy, with little bits of barbecued something floating in it.

What?! Wait -- did he just praise barbecue sauce? Infidel! Right, I know. I 'm supposed to disdain barbecue sauce. Sauce is for invalids, and Yankees, and other sissies. But you know what? They serve sauce because people like sauce. Properly done, it tastes good. And it moistens the meat. And soaks the bread. These are good things, people. I know, Kreuz Market doesn't serve sauce, so no one should serve sauce. But why does everyone else have to be like Kreuz Market? I'd rather put a little barbecue sauce on my ribs and enjoy them without having some barbecue imam shrieking at me that I'm violating an immutable code, thanks very much.

Another thing that Goode gets right is blending barbecue traditions with equally-indigenous Mexican and Cajun ingredients and flavors. The jambalaya has bits of barbecued pork chopped up in it, and the sausage is flecked with jalapenos, as is the cheese bread that comes with your order. Everything has jalapenos in it, and why not? Liking barbecue sauce may or may not make you a sissy, but objecting to some harmless chiles definitely does.

Look at that sandwich. That's a fine looking sandwich, people. You wish you could make -- or have -- a sandwich like that. And you can, without driving two hours into Hill Country. You're hungry, damn it to hell. The aesthetic travel experience can wait.

Follow-up Note on the New Urbanism: One of the many pleasures of Goode Co. is sitting outside at the big family-style picnic tables and watching the world go by on busy Kirby Drive. On our last visit to Goode Co., a very nice (if extremely filthy and, well, not a little menacing) homeless fella offered North a bright yellow balloon, which the ordinarily suspicious North was about to accept when his dad interrupted the transaction. It wasn't merely the prospect of a five-year-old accepting (metaphorical) candy from strangers that bothered Dad. It was that, not two hours earlier, Dad had seen the same homeless fella swoop down on an unsuspecting pigeon, grab it, and run off into the bushes next to the Kolache Factory. Now, it may have been that the pigeon was ill, and said homeless fella was simply attempting to render some field veterinary medicine. But I think it's more likely that bird season arrives a little earlier on Upper Kirby than elsewhere in Texas.

La Mexicana

2006-07-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

Tex Mex. That, people, is what we really eat here in H-town. Not Mexican food. Oh, I mean, there are places to get real Mexican food (Hugo's, 100% Taquito, etc.), but when a Houstonian suggests going out for Mexican food, he generally has in mind a place with chips on the table and a fifty-gallon vat of queso bubbling somwhere in the back.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Tex-Mex is our regional contribution to the umbrella cuisine of Mexican food and we should embrace it. So what if our indigenous terroir tastes of Velveeta? It tastes good, and that's more than you can say for many others. Besides which, Tex-Mex properly reflects much about Houston and Texas generally, including our agriculture (beef, corn), our ethnicities, and -- as demonstrated by the number of pleasing, 1960s-style eateries remaining (see, e.g., Felix's) -- the fact that Houston first came into its own with the post-war oil boom.

Which brings me to La Mexicana, located for many years now at Montrose and Fairview. La Mex is not, strictly speaking, a Tex-Mex joint. There's lots of Tex-Mex on the menu -- combo plates, cheese enchiladas, chile con queso galore -- but there's also a fair number of more traditional Mexican dishes. La Mexicana offers a brilliant guisado de puerco (a Platonic dish), a rich, brick-red stew of tender pork slow-cooked in a dried-pepper (though not overly spicy) sauce, as well as nopalitos and, for breakfast, chilaquiles -- the classic day-old tortilla dish with queso fresca and tomato broth. In other words, there's plenty on the menu for both Tex-Mex traditionalists, like my mother-in-law (who regards dishes lacking a friendly blanket of cheese with suspicion, if not outright disregard), and for those interested in something a little different.

First, the chips and salsa are excellent. There are two salsa: a vibrant green tomatillo salsa, often quite hot, and a dark red chile salsa. North -- our five year old chile-head -- thinks, and loudly opines, that the green salsa is immensely, immeasurably great, and that the red salsa is desperately, almost unbelievably inferior. I like them both.

Tex-Mex trads will particularly enjoy the beef fajitas. (Ignore the chicken fajitas. Technically, there's no such thing anyway, and they're typically pale and undistinguished here.) It's the usual sizzling iron skillet of meat, but at La Mex it comes piled high with grilled scallions, lemon slices, cilantro and japalenos.

The aromatic effect of all these fragrant additions makes a significant difference. The fresh-made flour tortillas are simply fantastic. Just try finding anything like these in New York, people. Ain't gonna happen.

Also excellent is the sopa Azteca, basically a more authentic version of the always-popular (if often-bland, tasteless, and crappy) tortilla soup. Why anyone in their right mind would pay $7.95 for tortilla soup at Chili's instead of $4.95 for the vastly superior sopa Azteca at La Mexicana is beyond me. Maybe it has something to do with Americans being fat, tasteless slobs who belly up to the trough without any regard for what they're eating? Perhaps.

Anyway, a word about the margaritas: cold, delicious, and maybe a hint of mint to them? The wife disagrees about the mint. Get frozen, never on the rocks.

Finally, the vibe at La Mex is very Montrose and very welcoming. A well-modulated mix of couples, families, gays, college kids, and the other neighborhood residents. Sit outside: there's generally a breeze even in the summer, and the crackheads stop harassing you once they recognize you as a regular.

Pizza

2006-07-21T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm snotty about pizza. I grew up in Philadelphia. I lived in New York. I know from pizza. Houston's not a pizza town. It just isn't. There's no indigenous Italian population to speak of, certainly not the sort of settled-off-the-boat population you can find in South Philly or Little Italy, or on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

But amazingly, there are excellent pizzas to be had here in the Bayou City.

First and foremost, there is Dolce Vita Pizzeria Enoteca on Westheimer. First off, let's just get it out of the way: Dolce Vita is a complete rip-off of Mario Batali's Otto at One Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. It is. The menu was simply stolen from Otto (as the Chronicle's Allison Cook actually discovered), and had some trademark attorneys not whispered in the chef-owner's ear, it probably would have been called "Otto West" or something similar. But ignore all that. Who cares? How often do you get to Otto? The parking situation is bad at Dolce Vita, but believe me, it's worse at Otto. More importantly, Dolce Vita has better pizza than Otto.

This isn't reverse-snobbery, people. It's true. Everything at Otto is super-uber-wonderful, except for the pizza. Batali's concepts far exceed his cooks' grasp at Otto, if only with regard to the pizza. Their appetizers are fantastic, their wine list brilliant and reasonable (for NYC), the vibe fun and downtown-y. But the pizzas? Eh.

The pizza at Dolce Vita is simply spectacular. Thin, fresh, bubbly and oily pizzas with immaculate toppings. My siciliana pizza, with olives and fresh tomato sauce, was so fruity and perfect that my friends tore pieces of it for themselves, like feral dogs. Even wacky pizzas, like the tonno pizza (covered with canned -- yep -- canned tuna) worked beautifully.

On the other end, the home-delivery front, New York Pizzeria (a local chain) has one Platonic pie: the Prosciutto Pizza. Thin slices of prosciutto and Roma tomatoes with (just okay) mozzarella cheese and basil on an honest-to-God, chewy, yeasty crust. It ain't pretty, people. It's not supposed to be. What it is, is a brilliant alternative to the increasingly repulsive national chains like Dominos and (sadly, because they used to be different) Papa John's. They're not always consistently great -- every fourth or fifth time, they give us a sucky pizza, just to remind us how good they usually are -- but when they're on, it's a great pie.

WARNING: we've only ever ordered from New York Pizzeria's Midtown location on West Gray. When we moved to a different part of town, my wife begged and wheedled the Midtown guys -- who call her "doll" and don't even let her specify her order when our number pops up on their caller ID, because they know -- into delivering to our new digs. Which is to say, I don't have any reason to think the other locations suck, but who knows?

Mai's Restaurant

2006-07-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when I was an impoverished Rice undergrad, I lived in a dilapidated old manse in what then called "Little Saigon," and is now known, somewhat more blandly, as Midtown. Of course, the generic new name is somewhat appropriate, given that most of the Vietnamese-Americans who lived in the neighborhood have since left and been replaced by hordes of yuppie singles. Although not all of the neighborhood's kinks have been ironed out, the local crackheads seem to have reached stasis with, if they are not now actually outnumbered by, the number of mid-century modern "antique" shops.

Depending on your point of view, this is considered progress.

One thing that hasn't changed is the ready availability of excellent Vietnamese food. Van Loc, Mai's, Les Givral's, and other restaurants bear witness to what was once a substantial, if not particularly vibrant, Vietnamese neighborhood.

Perhaps to better attract the yuppie hordes, most of the remaining restaurants have cleaned up considerably since the 1990s, none more so than Mai's. When I lived around the corner from it in 1992, Mai's was a clean if nondescript joint serving delicious and inexpensive Vietnamese cuisine. Today, Mai's is still clean and still serves Vietnamese food, often delicious, though the prices have gone up and the decor has gotten, ahem, "fancier."

The pho at Mai's is, in my opinion, the best in town. It's all about the broth. Mai's pho broth is clear, intensely flavored, and fragrant. With it comes a heaping pile of bean sprouts, jalapenos, mint, cilantro, and lime wedges, as well as a selection of sauces to further doctor the soup. The frisson provided by the MSG content gets your heart pounding faster than a can of Red Bull, and there's hardly anything better on one of Houston's rare cold days. And the barbecue pork spring rolls are insanely delicious: tender, chewy, deeply-flavored pork adds a zing to the (usually) freshly-prepared rolls, and the accompanying sauce is just right.

But my Lord, people, the service sucks.

"Brusque" is a eupemism that you often hear applied to restaurants with good food and bad service. The reviewer likes the place, loves the food, can't stop going back, and feels almost apologetic about criticizing the poor service that he gets despite his obvious loyalty to the restaurant. The service at Mai's used to be "brusque." Now it's "offensive."

For example, at lunch today the waitress threw the menus at us and walked off. That was it -- that's your welcome to the lunch service. And when I say "threw the menus at us," I don't mean that in a sissy, "I-wasn't-warmly-greeted-by-my-waitron!" kind of way. I mean that she threw them at us in a way that suggested she meant us harm. My lunch companion and I just looked at each other, startled, and burst out laughing.

Now, okay, it was 12:15 on a Friday and Mai's was busy. And that's the problem. Mai's is always busy. Round the clock. Lunchtime, dinner time, late at night. And so they've stopped giving a shit. But we keep going back. Why? I mean, the food is good but it's nearly as good at Van Loc, where they don't physically attack you. I stopped going to Burger King altogether six years ago because the woman behind the counter at the BK on South Carollton Avenue in New Orleans put mayonnaise on my Whopper after I specifically asked her not to. Presto -- done with the entire, 23,980-outlet chain. Screw you, Flame Broiled Whopper. Adios, Reconstituted Onion Rings (which, to be honest, I miss desperately).

But I keep going back to Mai's.

(Oh, and the waitress is the other problem. Two weeks ago, I was there with my boss and received the same treatment. Well, actually, she treated the Boss Man poorly, not me, which was kind of entertaining except that I had suggested that we eat there. Fortunately, he held it against her, not me. I think. We'll find out come bonus time.)

So, take this as my lily-livered, half-hearted threat, Mai's. You're on probation. Either start treating your customers like People Who Pay You Money, and not like muggers, or else. Seriously. I mean it.

2006-07-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

If you live in Houston, you're probably aware that (a) there are a lot of places to eat, and (b) a good number of them are terrible. Seriously, they suck. Mark's, for instance. Mark's sucks. Oh, I mean, Mark's food is probably better than Subway's, but in bang-for-the-buck terms they're probably fairly close. And the service is better at Subway. Not that I actually eat at Subway. But you see where I'm going.

All that aside, there are lots of fantastic places to eat in Houston, and this blog is intended as a highly-biased resource for food snobs living in or -- somewhat less likely -- visiting Houston.

So welcome to the page. It's unlikely that you and I will always agree. Feel free to tell me -- that's the purpose of feedback. I'll also reserve the right to call your favorite restaurant a pig's trough. Adversity makes us stronger, etc.

I'm also always eager to learn about new places/new dishes. Houston is immense, and although it can (reasonably) seem as if there's nothing to eat but chain-restaurant silage in sterile strip malls, there's actually a dizzying variety of delicious food to be had, particularly in the low- to middle-range of restaurants. There is also a good bit of indigenous cuisine, which half-witted snobs on the other coasts would likely deny. Attention, half-witted snobs: this blog is for you. Read and learn.