Houston's Final Four Challenge

I just found out about it, but Houston is holding a Final Four Restaurant Challenge!

The voting ends tomorrow, and you can vote once a day - So get to it!!

http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/03-07-11-choose-or-lose-good-grub-the-last-chance-to-vote-in-houston-ultimate-final-four-restaurant-challenge/

Question: What restaurant do you think should be in this final round?

Take that NYC!

On one of my favorite Houston websites, I found a great article on restaurant rows that should be growing in Houston!


Marine Gustin says it best....

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There are a few truths in life: You can never be too thin, too rich or have too many pairs of shoes. Or in my case, too many pairs of fancy cowboy boots.

But can you have too many new restaurants? Particularly if they are all opening within spitting distance of each other?

The National Restaurant Association’s just released 2011 Restaurant Industry Forecast is projecting Texas sales of $36.6 billion this year. That’s a healthy 3.9 percent increase over 2010. And it places Texas second only to California in restaurant sales volume.

“We definitely think that will apply to Houston,” says Mike Shine, president of Texas Food Group — a restaurant consulting company — and current president of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association.

“We’ve seen some bounce back over the holidays,” he adds.

Shine says the greater Houston area has more than 9,000 restaurants, and as some have gone under, an equal amount open.

“It just looks like more are closing,” Shine says. “You don’t see a dot.com close but you see a restaurant with a closed sign on it.”

So things are looking up for the industry here. But, in what is looking to be a good year, we have what seems like an awful lot of high-profile restaurants slated to open in 2011, and a heck of a lot of them are in the same neighborhood.

Westheimer Road, around Montrose Boulevard, may soon be the new Restaurant Row in town with the hotly anticipated openings of Chris Shepherd’s Underbelly in the old Chances spot (next door to the soon-to-open Anvil sister Hay Merchant beer bar), the Bill Floyd/Bryan Caswell/Robb Walsh vintage El Real Tex-Mex in the old Tower Theatre across the street, then just catty-corner, is Austin über hip Tyson Cole’s anticipated reimagining of the long-shuttered Felix spot into something like his hot capitol eateries Uchi and Uchiko.

Ah, but as they say in the late-night cable commercials, there’s more.

Just a stone’s throw away from that intersection, at the West Ave multi-use complex on Westheimer Road and Kirby Drive, we’ve already got a new Eddie V’s Prime Seafood and Schiller-Del Grande’s Ava Kitchen & Whiskey Bar. And SDG is about to open Alto Pizzeria upstairs from Ava’s. Apparently Ava and Alto have some kind of weird Italian/French love affair going on. Although I’m pretty sure they’re not real people.

Oh, and Pondicheri, from Indika’s chef/owner Anita Jaisinghani, is also going in at West Ave soon.

If you’re keeping score, that’s seven new hot spots for dining, er, eight if you count the temporary Tony Mandola’s Miracle Kitchen in the old Fin’s spot on Westheimer.

Which leads me to wonder, is there such a thing as critical mass when it comes to cuisine?

“Well, there certainly can be,” laughs GHRA’s Shine. “But that area is very active for dining, with a high income base. They’re taking a risk, but they are making decisions based on what their customers wanted.”

So maybe my little slice of the ‘hood will be this year’s new Washington Ave. Restaurant Row.

And if Ava is any indication, they all may fare well.

Ava opened Feb. 7. It’s an elongated 6,500-square-foot space with a cool, urban décor designed by SDG partner Candice Schiller, who describes it as “modern take on a traditional European space.”

I like the ocean-hued palette and the wall of windows facing Kirby Drive, but I like the food even better. Celebrity chef Robert Del Grande has created an eclectic menu that runs along Italian lines with a few Spanish and French touches and a dash of Texas thrown in for good measure. Makes you wonder how he keeps coming up with all these divine dishes.

“I go to sleep at night, wake up screaming and then write it down,” Del Grande says with his typical dry poetic wit.

Seriously, he adds that however creative a recipe idea is it still comes down to how it tastes.

“It’s like when an eclectic composer tells you the music is actually much better than it sounds,” says the chef/musician. “It’s not. It sounds and it tastes like what it is, no matter how much genius goes into the creation.”

What tastes good at Ava is the spicy coppa salad with aromatic Taleggio cheese, dried mission figs and fennel. And the delicate white anchovies paired with hot chorizo and green olives.

And the rigatoni with Bolognese sauce ripe with spicy beef is a welcome pasta dish on a cold day. There’s also lamb T-bones, seared ahi tuna, a burger (of course) and a wonderfully priced petite filet mignon ($17) on the lunch menu.

Of course there’s plenty of whiskey, but you shouldn’t pass on the citrusy house margaritas.

I like Ava. And I like the fact that there are now five fine restaurants within walking distance of where I live. And that doesn’t even include all the gourmet food trucks hanging around here lately.

Houston Ballet managing director Cecil C. Conner, Jr. recently lamented to me that the only thing he missed after moving here from New York City was being able to stroll down the street and check the menus in restaurant windows before deciding where to dine.

With this plethora of new places, a lot of Inner Loopers will now be able to do exactly that.

So take that, Big Apple. When it comes to cuisine, we are no longer a car centric culture.

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So there's the low down! Now if only I lived closer in and made a little more money......

Pizza Week

According to my favorite food holiday website (http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Pizza/PizzaRecipes.htm) the second week of January is Pizza Week!

That means I NEED to eat my favorite pizza: 1) BJ's Mediterranean Chicken Pizza, 2)Anything from Mr. Gatti's, or 3) Mine and Scott's favorite local take-out, Wood Fired Pizza

Even better, I just need to take the time and  make homemade pizza - I've actually never have done that...I found this website that looks like it has some great dough recipes.

Houston restaurants = Endless

We used to be known as the fattest city in America...well all I have to say is that we like good food! We may have started slimming down, but when you take a closer look into Houston's restaurants, you'll find hidden treasures. 


This top 10 list from Culture Map would be a great list to work off of if you're going to start trying new restaurants:


http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/01-03-11-where-to-eat-right-now-10-rockin-houston-restaurants/


My personal favorite though is Urbanspoon! You've probably heard of it because of it's known app for almost all phones - But the website is even better!


http://www.urbanspoon.com/c/8/Houston-restaurants.html


Urbanspoon is a place where you give reviews for restaurants, add your favorites, and they even give you Top 10 lists for different categories. It's best if you have the app on your phone because based on your location, it picks places close to you (also based on your selected choices of price range and type of food). Then once you eat there, go back to it on your phone and give a review!


Amazing and pretty convenient if you ask me.


Me and Scott tried telling ourself a long time ago that we would eat at the first place Urbanspoon randomly chose on my phone...however, I don't even think we kept that up after the first place it gave us. Maybe that would be fun to try again...


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Best of Lubbock

Over the past 3 years here in Lubbock, I feel like I've tried most local restaurants in town...however, now that I'm working in a locally owned cupcake store, I was wrong about what I thought. There are so much more restaurants in Lubbock that are just not known around campus. So in spite of this reality, here are my top 5 favorite restaurants (before trying more local places) and then 5 that I will try before graduating!

Jazz - originally from Lubbock

A whole-in-the-wall sized restaurant with the most delicious cajun food! My favorite is their stuffed zucchini which is actually an appetizer but is so filling. It's a fulled size zucchini filled with spicy, cajun flavors like shrimp, crawfish then fried - There's no way to describe it and even come close to getting it justice!

Orlando's Italian Restaurant

Other than Italian food being my favorite (or what I crave the most!) this is one of my favorite Italian places anywhere. Each of the locations in Lubbock are always busy, but once you sit down you feel like you are there forever and eating for hours on end! My favorite appetizer to get is the Garlic-Parmesan bread with the spaghetti meat sauce...another meal in itself! Everything else is also just as delicious - you can't go wrong ordering.

Gardski's Loft

Always the go-to place when everywhere else is crowded or doesn't sound good. It used to be a house, and is still a two story, open concept environment. They serve mainly comfort food (chicken fried steak, burgers, wraps) but my favorites are their California Chicken, chicken with avacados and pepperjack cheese, and Grilled Tilapia with fresh veggies. Fish is something I love but have been picky about it since I'm more than 500 miles away from the ocean, but this tilapia is delicious every time! This is also where I always go the Sunday I take anyone to the airport to leave Lubbock - me and my dad have probably been there 4 or 5 times just on Sundays

Spanky's

Good ole' Spanky's - One of the best burger you can find. Any burger guru needs to visit Lubbock just for Spanky's! Besides their burgers, they also have huge sandwiches and the best fried cheese you can find! Each piece is cut in a block, and probably equals about 5 of the regular sized fried cheese you would think of, and it's fried in something other than the usual dark crumbs...everything about this place is delcious!

Las Brisas Southwest Steakhouse

The place to eat at when some money has been saved up :) In the nice part of Lubbock, this steakhouse has everything a normal steakhouse does, but also a few southwestern type meals too. (fajitas and enchiladas). Their steak is one of the best I've had, and it's served with asparagus and cheesy mashed potatoes. I will be visiting Las Brisas any time I come back to Lubbock since I will hopefully have money to spend on a great meak!

Now I know you might not be visiting Lubbock anytime soon, but if you ever get the urge then these are the top 5 places I would first recommend....but then I could keep going on with every other place I love here - Stella's, One Guy From Italy, Triple J's, Skyviews, Abuelo's....

And now the 5 places I will try before leaving in December:

La Diosa

Lujan's Mexican

Cafe J

Thai Pepper

82nd Street Cafe

As of Friday I had 50 days in Lubbock until graduation so I better get to trying all these placea! Until then, goodnight and I'll update you on more Lubbock's best soon!