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 Thin crisp pizza at Caffe Bello The pizza at Caffe Bello Taverna and Pizzeria at 320 Westheimer came on a cracker crisp crust that was a little charred around the edges. It was a delicious appetizer–but it would not have made much of a meal. We tried the one with sausage and peppers for lunch the other day and practically inhaled it. Luckily we also ordered a salad and some pasta.
 Thick cheese pizza at Quattro The pizza at Quattro, the Italian restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel, was gooey with cheese and loaded with mushrooms, onion and salami slices. The first slice was stellar, but the crust got kind of gummy after the pizza sat on the table for a while.
I thought a lot about these two pizzas.
read more Thin Pizza, Stuffed Pasta and Canned Tuna »
 Head Chef Casey Gaido I had a stunning crab salad and an elegant red snapper in lemon butter at Gaido’s last week. I also met the new head chef, Casey Gaido. Casey is a recent CIA grad and a fourth-generation member of the founding family. Now that Casey is in charge of the kitchen at the hundred year old seafood restaurant on Galveston’s seawall, he promises that the once-legendary cooking will return to its roots.
“In 2006, you wrote a review in the Houston Press titled “Fish on Its Laurels” that I read every week,” Casey told me when I met him. I was embarrassed. It was obviously a bad review, but I didn’t remember what I wrote. So I reread it when I got home. I faulted Gaido’s for being so inconsistent. On one visit I thought I had died and gone to Galatoire’s–and on the next my dinner guest remarked that the place felt like a “gone-to-seed country club.”
read more Gaido's Regaining Its Glory »
This is the height of the blue crab season and wild shrimp fishing is underway as well. It’s also Houston Restaurant Week. When people ask me where to go for the $35 dinner specials, I recommend the places that are featuring crab and shrimp. Like Haven for instance–Chef Evans has a crab cake [...]
The CIA San Antonio campus at the Pearl Brewery Complex on the north end of the Riverwalk is undergoing a major expansion at the moment. The new CIA building will celebrate its Grand Opening in October with an open house. CIA Antonio, officially became the Culinary Institute of America’s third campus in 2008. The school was founded to realize a dream – El Sueño – to elevate Latin American cuisines to their rightful place among the great cuisines of the world, and to expand diversity within the foodservice industry.
read more CIA, Texas »
After I published a post titled A Short History of Shrimp and Grits in the Houston Press last year, I got a comment from Nathalie Dupree who reminded me that she had written an entire cookbook on the subject. Dang! That’s dedication.
read more More Shrimp n' Grits »
Chef Chris Shepherd made this dish of crispy fried pig’s ears and poached eggs with chopped greens for a Soter wine dinner at Catalan last month. It was a tasty appetizer, and it certainly got a lot of attention from the wine guys. I usually eat my pig’s ears pickled–they are a favorite [...]
 David Norman While I was in Austin last week, I stumbled over to Congress Avenue in the early morning murk looking for breakfast. Las Manitas wasn’t where I left it. But there was a new place called Annie’s Cafe. And there I spotted my old friend David Norman baking bread. I tapped on the glass and got him to let me in although the place hadn’t opened yet. Norman is a veteran boulanger who has worked at such famous bakeries as Upper Crust in Seattle and the legendary Bouley Bakery in New York. He started at Annie’s around a month ago, he said.
read more David Norman Is Now at Annie's »
Chef Randy Evans at Haven, the locavore restaurant on Algerian Way in Houston, served this simple salad of butter lettuce, wild brown shrimp and Texas red grapefruit that last time I was there. Since they don’t eat bold-flavored brown shrimp anywhere else in the country and we don’t produce enough supersweet red grapefruit [...]
Leaders of the Houston restaurant community are exploring the idea of buying vacant lots in the Fifth Ward and turning them into organic gardens. At a recent meeting, the group looked at several lots adjoining the Emile Street Garden. Pictured (from left) David Kim and Stephan Fairfield of Covenant Capital, chef Randy Evans [...]
 Bryan Caswell at Barney Greengrass I met up with Bryan Caswell, Houston’s celebrated seafood chef and the author of the Wholefish blog while we were both in New York. I got him to meet me at my favorite New York smoked fish emporium, Barney Greengrass: The Sturgeon King, on Amsterdam and 86th on the Upper West Side. Caswell had already been to Marea, the trendy seafood restaurant that everybody in New York is talking about, so I thought I’d take him someplace old.
Barney Greengrass is an ancient “appetizing store” that’s famous for smoked fish and caviar. Over the years, famous customers at Barney Greengrass have included, Groucho Marx, Alfred Hitchcock, Meyer Lansky, Irving Berlin, and Al Jolson. Marx Brothers scriptwriter and New Yorker essayist, S. J. Perelman, used to write about the place.
read more Barney Greengrass: The Sturgeon King »
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