I was talking to Lori Moffat at Texas Highways Magazine about Houston’s wacky ethnic fusion dishes yesterday. I thought of Kaiser, the lovable head chef at Himalaya on Hillcroft. Kaiser served me a plate of his wildly spicy Pakistani fajitas the other day. Kaiser calls the dish “steak tikka” on the menu and serves it with hot flatbread. But the inspiration in unmistakable. The seasoning blend even contains the natural tenderizer papain–just like most fajita recipes. There’s also lots of chile powder, cumin, garlic, and other spices in the Tex-Mex masala.
Kaiser loves Tex-Mex almost as much as he loves his native Desi cuisine. And everybody loves Vietnamese fajitas.So why not Pakistani fajitas?
Genius! I wish I knew what that secret blend of spices was… Happy belated Cinco de Mayo!
I mentioned one time on Alison’s blog that if life was fair there would be a statue of Chef Kaiser in a park somewhere in southwest Houston. A surprising number of her readers agreed with me. And I’ll never forget the time I told him I had lived in Kansas City for a while and Chef Kaiser said “My friend, Gates and Son’s is the best barbecue in the world!” I was not really expecting a Desi on Hillcroft to know about my all-time favorite restaurant, but the man knows his meat!