I stop by Segari’s every now and then to eat a bowl of rich murky gumbo and remember Sam Segari. Sam was larger than life, a beautiful Houston eccentric who refused to play by the rules. He started out in 1971 with a piano bar called Sam’s Song and subsequently ran 6 or 8 different joints before he ended up at his last little restaurant on Shepherd.
Shrimp salads and shrimp cocktails mounded with enormous U8 shrimp were his trademark dishes. And then there was his deep, dark seafood gumbo. He moved to the current place on Shepherd, a little south of I-10 after his restaurant on Durham a few blocks away burnt down. For a long time, the place didn’t have a sign.
Sam paid a sign fee to the city for the place on Durham and he thought the fee ought to transfer across the street when he moved. The city disagreed. Rather than pay the city twice, he went without a sign. If you didn’t already know him, you probably weren’t going to eat there anyway, he reasoned. There’s a whole collection of stories about Sam at the restaurant’s website.
Sam’s daughter Angela runs the place now. Go say hello, order a Crown on the rocks and a bowl of gumbo and tell her I sent you.