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It’s hard to figure out where Texas cooking is headed right now. There are a lot of different trends going on and they have little to do with each other. In fact, sometimes it seems like the chefs in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin arrived here from different planets. In this series, I’ll check out food from some hot Texas chefs and look for clues about the big picture.
Felipe Riccio’s “Rainbow Runner-Mayhaw Ceviche” appetizer at Reef in Houston, is a marvel. It combines two unique ingredients in a sensational dish that neatly sums up the restaurant’s philosophy.
read more TXChefs3: Trashfish Creole: Bryan Caswell and Felipe Riccio »
It’s hard to figure out where Texas cooking is headed right now. There are a lot of different trends going on and they have little to do with each other. In fact, sometimes it seems like the chefs in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin arrived here from different planets. In this series, I’ll check out food from some hot Texas chefs and look for clues about the big picture.
 Chef Matt McAllister
Chef Matt McCallister served lunch at Springdale Farm in Austin during the Foodways Texas Symposium last month. It was the first time I got a chance to sample the Dallas wunderkind’s cuisine. The salad was made from vegetables and flowers picked minutes ago from plants growing in the urban farm where we were seated. “Roots, leaves, stems, soil,” read the menu description.
 I watched as the salads were assembled by McCallister and his volunteer assistants. You sure can’t call this tweezer food–the chef encouraged his helpers not to waste time arranging things, but rather to put the ingredients randomly around the plate. Carrots, kohlrabi and beets were the roots, the leaves included dinosaur kale, chard and lettuce, dill and other herbs were the stems. The soil was an amazing blend of brown powders including sumac (a Middle Eastern ingredient sometimes used in zaatar), cocoa powder, nuts and spices. Olive oil powder was sprinkled here and there among the vegetables–it turned slippery when you reconstituted it in your mouth.
read more TexChefs2: Rootsy Radical: Matt McCallister »
It’s hard to figure out where Texas cooking is headed right now. There are a lot of different trends going on and they have little to do with each other. In fact, sometimes it seems like the chefs in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin arrived here from different planets. In this series, I’ll check out food from some hot Texas chefs and look for clues about the big picture.
 Arctic Char with Bananas and Apple Slice The title on the menu at the new restaurant in the Elian Hotel in the Hill Country outside of San Antonio reads: “Sustenio, Modern Southwestern Cuisine by Stephan Pyles.” The test tube full of melon puree had a capsule inside that exploded in my mouth as I drank it–it was melon juice. The flavor reminded me it would soon be time for Pecos cantaloupes. The crispy-skinned arctic char with creamy rutabaga puree, freeze-dried banana chunks and a glazed apple slice with a perfect star in the middle was wonderful. Though it brought to mind the question that restaurant critics and chefs in Texas used to grapple with: “What makes this dish ‘Southwestern?’”
read more TexChefs1: Molecular Cowboys: Stephan Pyles and David Gilbert »
Food TV would be a cool thing to do. Mess around in the kitchen–take a few videos. Eat good. What could be better?
Meet food TV mega-producer Irene Wong. After Irene Wong produced half a dozen hits for the Food Network, she went independent and started her own production company, IW Productions. These days, she spends nine months a year on the road shooting 6 days a week for a grueling 12 hours a day.
Irene and her crew came to El Real Tex-Mex on Saturday to shoot a segment for Unique Eats on the Cooking Channel. Irene and company got there at 4 AM! That’s one hour after we close on Friday night. Chef Bryan Caswell and I were asked to arrive at the leisurely hour of 6 AM. Irene’s gang had already lit the entire kitchen and were testing equipment when we got there. They had Caswell wired up with a microphone before he got a cup of coffee in his mouth.
read more Irene Wong Shoots El Real »
 The RobbWalsh.com “Texas Eats” website was down for more than a week due to technical difficulties. If you tried to find us while were out of commission, we apologize.
It seems our server got raided by interweb evil doers. We ended up with the “WordPress Pharma Hack.” Every time we tried to send [...]
 Seafood chef Denis Wilson, the name behind Denis’ Seafood and the late Jimmy Wilson’s Seafood and Chop House, is back in business in a North Houston fast casual restaurant called Louisiana Homestyle Kitchen. Only this time, instead of seafood, he is specializing in free range chicken.
The menu is a veritable Bubba Gump litany [...]
Chef Maurizio Ferrarese of Quattro Restaurant in the Houston Four Seasons hotel and I collaborated on a Texas cioppino last Friday. Maurizio invited me to join him in the kitchen as part of the Guest Chef series there. I know, I know, I am not really a chef. But I do work in a lot of kitchens–mainly developing Tex-Mex recipes.
read more Texas Cioppino »
In the cookbook published years ago by Antoine’s restaurant of New Orleans, the author claims that when the dish known as Oysters Rockefeller was first invented, the French chef was actually looking for a substitute for escargot. Had that chef looked a little harder, he might have found a much closer cousin to the European snail.
read more Texas Whelks, Escargot-style »
 Chris Shepherd
Chef Chris Shepherd’s new restaurant, Underbelly, will be next door to the Hay Merchant Craft Beer Bar in the old Chances building–across the street from our very own Tex-Mex joint, El Real! I ran into Shepherd at the Farmer’s Market last weekend. Alison Cook had just reported the news. Underbelly will [...]
 Maurizio Ferrarese Chef Maurizio Ferrarese of Quattro Restaurant in the Houston Four Seasons hotel was very kind to me when I paid the restaurant a visit last week. As I reported here, when he heard I was disappointed that Vitello Tonnato had been taken off the menu, he whipped up a plate of the wonderfully bizarre veal and canned tuna combination for me. Chef Ferrarese, who is a native of the region near Milan, has only been in Houston since July and he hasn’t had much of a chance to look around. So I offered to take him out to lunch. Where did I take the young Italian chef?
read more Everybody Likes Spaghetti »
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