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Wine, Food, and Other Vital Things

Tag: Houston (Page 1 of 3)

Evan White pours a quartino. (Courtesy of Bludorn)

From Babbo to Boulud to Bludorn: Evan White Keeps the Wine Flowing

June 9, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Evan White is the star of the latest “Wine Talk,” and he got his start in the hospitality industry at one of my favorite restaurants in Manhattan. That would be Babbo.

White now resides in Houston, Texas, and he’s the wine director for the Bludorn Hospitality Group, for he which oversees a number of wine lists and beverage programs. I liked hearing his take on problematic customers, and share his enthusiasm about pairing wines with Vietnamese cuisine. Wait until you hear what he says is the best cabernet sauvignon made in the United States.

Bludorn occupies one of my favorite spaces in Houston. (Julie Soefer photo)

Read the story at PaperCity.

Inprint Is Still on My Cultural Agenda

August 4, 2020 / / 0 Comments

One of the things I miss about Houston is Inprint, the city’s literary arts nonprofit organization. If you are interested in the written or spoken word, and aren’t familiar with Inprint, you need to be, no matter where you live. Its programming agenda is rich and diverse, and includes myriad writing workshops for children and adults, podcasts, and other engaging events. It also supports emerging writers through fellowships and prizes.

The component of the organization that I most enjoy is the Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, which, since 1980, “has featured more than 370 writers, including winners of nine Nobel Prizes, 62 Pulitzer Prizes, 56 National Book Awards, 50 National Book Critics Circle Awards, 15 Man Booker Prizes, as well as 19 U. S. Poets Laureate. The authors read from their work, followed by on-stage interviews and book signings at which audience members can meet the writers.”

It truly is one of the city’s treasures.

I’m a resident of Los Angeles now, and before COVID-19 hit I had been devouring the riches of the city’s vibrant arts and culture scene, including the Geffen Playhouse, the LA Phil, the Mark Taper Forum, to name but three of the hundreds of stages and venues at our disposal. When the virus has played itself out, I’ll be back in attendance at plays and concerts and exhibits. That cannot come soon enough.

Kevin Kwan: A chronicler of vanity, excess, and status anxiety.

Despite the distance, Inprint is still part of my existence. The pandemic has thrown events online, and at the end of this month I’ll be (virtually) at the live reading series, which is featuring Kevin Kwan, who’ll be reading from his new novel, Sex and Vanity. Kwan, as you are likely to know, wrote Crazy Rich Asians, which was made into a successful film of the same name. Expect droll and witty repartee and lots of humor.

You should join me on August 31, so get your (free) ticket here.

We'll always have Paris.

She Said Yes, Sixty Floors Above Liberty Street: A Snapshot of Our Never-Ending Journey

November 25, 2018 / / 2 Comments

Angela and I lived around the corner from each other in Brooklyn Heights, a few years apart. We both worked at a financial publication in the Financial District, The Bond Buyer, at different times several years apart. Her apartment on Montague Street was small and cold in the winter, mine on Atlantic and Henry was small and too warm in the winter. Our paths never crossed in New York back then, but it seems they were destined to.

With hindsight, it seems only natural that Angela and I should have chosen to live in that Brooklyn neighborhood. Down the street is St. Anne’s School, and restaurants of all sorts, by the hundreds, are a short walk away.  Sahadi’s is there, and BAM is nearby. It’s a wonderful place, with fine views of Manhattan — Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, among other great writers and artists, called it home, and I sometimes think about all the adventures Angela and I would have had there if our lives had intersected earlier.

Our meeting had to wait a few more years. It was 2008, and I had been in the United Arab Emirates since February, working at an English-language daily based in Abu Dhabi. Angela arrived in December, having accepted a job on the business desk. I knew the ins and outs of what it took to get settled in the UAE (driver license, mobile-phone and bank accounts, social courtesies and etiquette, bureaucratic idiocy, etc.), so offered to help her get settled.

Early in 2009, we decided to move to Dubai. I was spending a lot of time in that emirate because my friend James lived there (it’s about an hour’s drive from Abu Dhabi straight through the desert), and our employer had dropped the ball regarding Angela’s promised Abu Dhabi lodgings. We settled on a large apartment on the 34th floor of a new high-rise complex with impressive views of the Arabian Gulf.

Here’s a photo gallery of some of the people, places, and things that mean the world to us:

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New friends (too many to mention here), old friends, dinner parties, excursions to Barracuda (a liquor emporium in the Ras al Khaimah desert) to stock up on wine and spirits, trips to Beirut and Oman and Umbria and Barcelona many other places, job changes — Angela and I departed the newspaper for which we moved to the Gulf, she to freelance for The New York Times, Time, and other publications, I to work at Al Arabiya — arguments, smiles, misunderstandings, the sadness and joy of love and life, human frailties … we experienced it all.

Then a farewell to the Emirates for both of us, after nearly five years, and adventures in Europe and India and Russia and Hong Kong and Japan and reunions with friends and an award for Angela in her parent’s ancestral homeland and work in several restaurants in Europe and so much more.

Our journey continued in 2013, back in the U.S. Angela had accepted a job as Texas editor of Xconomy; I spent February of that year in Hong Kong with my friend Dean Cox, then a week or so in Tokyo before heading to New York and a reunion with friends and visits to restaurants and places dear to me (Babbo, Palo Santo, Le Bernardin, the Met, Prospect Park, et al). I flew down to Florida to spend some time with my parents and ailing grandmother.  Angela met my parents, and she and I gathered with friends at a lake house in North Carolina, and at The Kentucky Derby (our stay in a haunted bed and breakfast overseen by an eccentric woman was full of spirit). Angela returned to Houston, and I to Florida, where we soon buried Ida, in my mother’s family cemetery next to my grandfather James.

I had begun searching for employment in Houston, and drove north and west from Florida, stopping along the way for a few days in New Orleans (a culinary sojourn, where I dined with a friend at Brigtsen’s, a friend whom I had not seen for years but whose distinctive voice had led me to him from across a crowded room in an artist’s Paris atelier a few years before our New Orleans dinner).

Angela’s parents were kind enough to put me up in their home while I looked for an apartment in Houston, and she and I renewed our adventures in Texas’ Hill Country, Dallas, Austin, Chicago, St. John, California, New Orleans, Berlin and Prague and Puglia. We started The Brockhaus, and took it to Nantucket, where I was hired by Constance and Alison to cook at their wedding  (just two of the fine people I’ve met through Angela). I got to know Angela’s family, we celebrated Indian and American holidays, and we travelled with friends (individuals full of art and spirit and soul and grace and love) and spent time with my family and adopted a cat. And we never stopped journeying.

A moment 10 years in the making.

In September of this year, Angela and I finally walked the streets of New York together, the city I love and lived in for 15 years,  where, 60 floors above Liberty Street, at the close of a long meal at Manhatta, she said yes.

Where will we venture next? I don’t know, but we can’t wait.

UB Preserv: A Fine Cocktail, and How About Those Collard Greens and Short Rib Fajitas?

May 25, 2018 / / 0 Comments

When I found out I would be moving to Houston, back in 2013, I reached out to John T. Edge for some recommendations. I had seen a piece of his in Departures about the city’s food scene, and he told me to go to Underbelly and Himalaya (among other restaurants). About both of those places, I found out that John T. was resoundingly right. Himalaya soon became an addiction, and it still occupies a place in the top 5 on the Brockhaus Best Houston Restaurant List. As for Chris Shepherd’s Underbelly, one of my favorite things to do after work (I was the managing editor at the Houston Press at the time) was to take a seat at the bar, order a glass of wine, and get a dish of the Korean braised goat dumplings. Excellent food, friendly staff, beautiful restaurant, and I liked the wine list and its overseer.

Fast forward to last night, when Angela and I met some friends at UB Preserv, Shepherd’s new baby, a restaurant designed to, as the menu states, “preserve what we started at Underbelly.” Situated in the building that previously housed Poscol, UB Preserv, to judge by our dishes, is off to a great start. I arrived early, and took a seat at the bar. (Constance, a friend from Austin, told me a few weeks ago that Becca, to whom Constance had introduced me one evening at Drink.Well., the cocktail bar and gastropub at which Becca worked, was now living in Houston and behind the bar at UB Preserv, an added reason to make my inaugural visit to the restaurant.) I greeted her, and we talked a bit about Constance and Alison, then I asked her to make me her favorite drink on the menu. Good choice, that, because she served me the Billy Gibson, a nice mixture of dry gin and vermouth, fennel, and pickled onion. It’s what every Friday evening needs for a great beginning.

Dry gin and vermouth, pickled onion, and fennel: The Billy Gibson is a worthy cocktail.

Fatema and Wisam arrived around 7:30, so we sat at our table and waited for Angela, who was coming from downtown. Drinks were ordered, Angela arrived, and we got to the pleasure of ordering food. We started with the Crispy Rice Salad and the Pork Dumplings, the former a bowl of, yes, rice crisped perfectly, toothsome and possessing a comforting texture, plus a mix of herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, and a vinaigrette made with serrano peppers. The dumplings were warm and moist, the pork was slightly tangy and rich, and the addition of fried shallots, soy, chilies, and black vinegar produced a miniature flavor bomb.

Like pork? Get these dumplings.

Wisam and Fatema ordered the Crawfish and Noodles, and Angela wanted the Vietnamese Short Rib Fajitas, at $65 a dish definitely meant to be shared, though we were sharing everything. It occupies a space on the menu with Smoked Bone-In Lamb Shoulder ($70), Texas Heritage Crispy Chicken ($68), and Whole Roasted Snapper ($54). The rib meat, from 44 Farms, is a thing of beauty, and its fat content will wow you. Such flavor alone would satisfy, but when you wrap the meat in a leaf of the lettuce it’s served with and then add some mint and cilantro, the next level is achieved. The flavors and textures mingle, and all is right with the world. The crawfish dish was, to my palate, less successful; the crustaceans were delicate and buttery, but I think I was wanting a touch more acid. The noodles are crispy, however, and this dish will please many.

The bonus of  the evening? A bowl of collard greens that rank up there for me as some of the best I’ve had. The greens had been sliced razor-thin, and the broth was full of umami; we ate the greens with chopsticks and I drank the broth from the bowl when they were gone. Order these collards.

A pork broth and collard greens of righteous deliciousness.

The wine list is diverse and friendly; Teutonic Wine Company’s 2017 Pinot Noir Rosé will cost you $42, and a bottle of 2014 Müller-Catoir Scheurebe can be yours for $43. We went with a red blend from Tenuta di Trinoro, the 2015 Le Cupole ($54).

The 2015 Tenuta di Trinoro ‘Le Cupole’

The evening progressed, the place emptied out — when we left there were two guests sitting at a table with their food— and the experience had been much more than good. UB Preserv will, I predict, attract lots of diners, and carry on well what Shepherd and his team began at Underbelly.

"The Vintagers" (after miniature of the "Dialogues de Saint Gregoire" (Collection of the Royal Library of Brussels)

An (Italian) Gentleman of Wine: Osvaldo Pascolini

January 27, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Have you had a good glass of Prosecco lately? A really good one? There’s a lot of, well, let’s just say, “mediocre” examples out there, so don’t drink that. Osvaldo Pascolini, whom I met a month or so ago, likes Prosecco, and drinks it often. I asked him a few questions about wine recently, and you might be interested in what he has to say. He’s the subject of the latest Wine Talk, which you can read here.

Pascolini is a geologist, works in the energy industry, and hails from Italy. He now resides in Houston, teaches courses on wine, and never swirls a sparkling wine. Open a bottle and get to know him.

Osvaldo Pascolini knows a bit about geology and wine.

Drink well, with people you like.

Want more wine Read on? 

From Boston to Austin, With Wine in Mind
A Chardonnay For Your Mother (and You)
Don’t Dismiss the Peat
Distinctive Whisky Enters a New Era
A Whisky Legend Visits Houston
A Rare Cask, Indeed
Austin Whisky, Strange Name
Here’s Your Texas Rum Goddess
A ZaZa Wine Guy Loves Great Service
A Merlot That Your Snob Friend Will Love
French Couple Make a Sauvignon Blanc in California
A Perfect Afternoon Chardonnay
Terry Theise Talks Reisling
A New Wine Wonderland
Paris Wine Goddess Tells All
Rice Village Wine Bar Has a Cleveland Touch
A Texas White Blend for Your Table
A Pinot Noir Full of Flavor
This Pinot Gris From Oregon Pairs Well With Cheese
Willamette, Dammit!
A Value Rioja
Drink Pink!
Underbelly Veteran Goes for Grenache
A Man of Letters and Wine
Ms. Champagne Wants a Nebuchadnezzar
The Wine Artist Goes for Chardonnay
This American Loves Spain and Its Wines
Houston’s Wine Whisperer Has a Soft Touch
Blackberry Farm’s Somm Pours in Splendor
Mr. Pinot Noir: Donald Patz of Patz & Hall
A Cork Dork Wants to Spend More Time in Tuscany
Sommelier Turned Restaurateur Daringly Goes Greek
Texas Master Sommelier Debunks Wine Geeks
A Bottle From Gigondas Changed This Houston Man’s Life
Oil Man Falls in Love, and the Rest is Good-Taste History
Ryan Cooper of Camerata is a Riesling Man
Mixing It Up With Jeremy Parzen, an Ambassador of Italy
Sommelier at One of Houston’s Top Wine Bars Loves Underdogs

Turkish dumplings at Nancy's Hustle: These will warm you on a chilly evening.

Lardo Takes Me to Florence, Manti to Istanbul: That’s a Great Week in Houston Dining

January 16, 2018 / / 0 Comments

You’re walking around Florence, taking in as much as you can, running your hands across the stones of buildings, wondering about the people who lived and loved and died in them a thousand years before you were born. You imagine all the wild boar roaming in the hills above the city, think about feasts of yore at which cinghiale starred, you wind down a narrow passage near the river and find yourself outside the restaurant with the rabbit dish you love. At your table, you order a quartino of Nebbiolo and accept a small plate of lardo, a gift from the owner. Outside, the sun begins to set. Inside, the evening begins, deliciously.

Lardo. If you’ve never experienced the pleasure that is lardo melting on your tongue, get a table at Houston restaurant Charivari (no, it’s not the only place in the city that serves lardo, but it’s certainly home to some fine examples of it) and ask for it. The chef, Johann Schuster, will be happy to oblige. Here’s a look at a platter of the food that I sampled recently at the midtown establishment — and I find myself wanting more as I write this.

Lardo, two ways, and tongue head cheese.

Read about Schuster’s lardo here, and don’t delay if you want some, because this is not mass-produced salumi. (I write about a great dish at Nancy’s Hustle as well in the piece. The manti served at the new — and popular — restaurant in Houston’s EaDo area, took me back to Istanbul, as the lardo transported me to Florence. Not bad for a week in Texas.)

Finally, I give you sausage, two made with skill by Schuster, which I tasted on the lardo evening. There’s a rich, decadent blood sausage, and a garlic sausage that is as good as any I’ve ever had. You’ll love them.

Blood sausage and a hearty garlic sausage, as served at Charivari

The Paratha-dilla: I can't get enough of it.

Eat This Today (In Houston): The Paratha-dilla Stuffed With Lamb at Himalaya

December 22, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Yes, there are still plenty of people (unfortunate souls) who have not experienced the (almost aways) excellence that is Himalaya, Kaiser Lashkari’s restaurant that features plastic-covered tables and valiant but often-frustrating service, but some of the best food in the sprawling region that is the Houston metropolitan area. It is, to my palate, the best Indian-(Pakistani) restaurant around, and the righteousness of my opinion was again confirmed about a week ago.

I’ve had most everything on Lashkari’s menu, including the masala fried chicken and the chicken fried steak, both of which are excellent dishes, as well as the saag paneer and any number of varieties of biryani. I’ll continue to order those. But now I’m raving about something I had never had before until a week or so ago, and that is the Paratha-dilla made with lamb. Raves are not sufficient for this. It is, with no exaggeration, one of the best things I’ve eaten in a restaurant this year.

Parathas are unleavened flatbreads indigenous to the Indian subcontinent — from the words “parat” and “atta” … or “layers of cooked dough” in English — and they can be wonderful when made by a skilled person, or leaden and dull when made by sloppy hands. I’ve had many of both types, and the one at Himalaya is decidedly in the former group. Light in texture, yet substantial; flaky as opposed to dense and doughy. In short, comfort food at its best. But at Himalaya, they’ve been combined with the “dilla” of “quesadilla” and transformed into something altogether miraculous.

The Paratha-dilla with lamb, ground and full of spices, and served with onions and masala sauce and tomatoes and cilantro, hits all of the senses with aplomb and confidence. The flaky and moist bread almost melts into the lamb, and a bite including the onions and tomato and cilantro and sour cream? It’s a thing of beauty, in the most sensual sense of the word.

Lashkari loves a good mash-up — he’s got a Smoked Brisket Masala and Shrimp Masala and Grits rotating on his menu now, among other creations — and the Paratha-dilla is one of his best. (And for anyone who doesn’t know, Himalaya is BYOB, so drink well.)

If you want great food, go to Himalaya, a gem in Houston.

NPR Shows Some Love to Himalaya, One of Houston’s Culinary Jewels

December 10, 2017 / / 3 Comments

You’ve all read about my visits to Kaiser Lashkari’s little restaurant in a strip mall off of busy Interstate 59; Himalaya is one of my favorite restaurants in Houston, and if I don’t have my fix of saag paneer and masala fried chicken — not to mention chicken hara masala, goat biryani, and chicken fried steak — at least once every three weeks or so, the withdrawal symptoms get bad. The saag paneer is, bar none, the best I’ve had anywhere, including versions served to me in several cities in India and any number cooked by Indian mothers. Himalaya is on The Brockhaus’ Top Restaurants in the World List, and is nearer the top of that roster than it is the bottom. It is the real thing.

National Public Radio has now joined the Himalaya bandwagon, and on Sunday morning aired a visit by Lulu Garcia-Vavarro to the restaurant. If you have not had the pleasure of tasting Kaiser’s food or hearing him hold forth on food and business and life, give the NPR segment a listen by clicking here. Then, take a drive to the Hillcroft area and sit down to some of the best food in Texas. Tell Kaiser I sent you. (And if you don’t know, Himalaya is BYOB, so chill some Riesling and make it a feast.)

Some meat: A ribeye fit for two (or three).

The Fall Season Arrives: Time for The Newness in Everything

October 25, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The light outside changes, becomes softer, less harsh; the temperature falls and the humidity grows friendlier; and spending more time outdoors becomes a pleasant reality. It’s autumn, the best time, in my opinion, to enjoy what’s on offer in the world. The new season brings new art exhibits, theatre performances, fashion, and, thank goodness, wines and food. New dishes, menus, ingredients, and pairings await in restaurants everywhere. It’s a good time to taste.

Want some good tastes? Have you experienced duck heart bolognese? If not, pay a visit to One Fifth/Romance Languages in Houston and embrace the new. It’s rich and hearty and comforting, and my pasta (casarecce) was just as I like it … one small second past al dente. In addition, I offer you a fine ribeye from Del Frisco’s and an impressive foie gras concoction that’s on the menu at Tony’s. You can read more about these three dishes here. Book a table (or sit at the bar), order some wine, relax a little, and live.

Order this as an opener, or at the end of your evening.

If you cook at home — and if you don’t, you’re missing out on a meditative ritual — here’s a great recipe for salmon that’s warming on an autumn evening. It’s easy to make, and it pairs perfectly with that bottle of Lambrusco you’ve been wanting to open. Want more fun? Cook with someone who excites you. It’ll make the food that much more satisfying.

It was a tough summer … hurricanes and earthquakes and fires (I’m working on a piece about the disaster in Napa and Sonoma, so look for it here) affected millions, bringing despair, heartache, and death. Let’s hope that fall brings, along with the new, a touch of solace and rejuvenation. We could all use some of that.

‘It’s Really Hard’: The Human Spirit Is a Thing of Confounding Beauty

September 4, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The woman stands on the street in front of her home, in the Braeswood section of  Houston, pieces of her life stacked haphazardly on the lawn, edging out over the curb. Battered sections of walls, mattresses, a cat’s scratching post, bedspreads and pillows and other items I did not immediately recognize. We had just emerged from a home across the way, a house that, though it stood on a piece of land comfortably above street level, had flooded on Sunday during Harvey’s onslaught. Its owners had been forced to retreat to their attic, saw in hand; they were, they told us, planning to cut a hole in the roof and signal for rescue.

“We went to bed the night before thinking we would be OK; we had never flooded here, this house had never flooded” the husband says. “It was around midnight, and the water was flowing in the street, but we were dry, no water in our house. We set the alarm for 4 a.m., just to make sure, and still, OK.” Then, his wife says, 6 a.m arrived; she got out of bed and saw the water flowing across the kitchen floor. “Harvey was waiting us out; he waited everyone out.”

This woman had nearly died during Hurricane Ike. “I was driving and went through some water that was too high; I jumped out of the car and tried to walk, but the current was strong,” she recounts. “The water was up to my waist, and I grabbed a street sign. A man was wading toward me, no shirt, struggling. He reached for me, and we walked together, me first, grabbing onto something, pulling him, then he would do the same.”

We were on the couple’s back patio. The home’s swimming pool was half empty, the water in it turned green with algae. “I could not find any of my shoes,” the woman tells us. “I guess they all floated away. They gave me these,” she says, nodding toward the brown canvas loafers on her feet. “They” are the people whose nearby home she and her husband were taken to in the boat that had ferried them away from their flooded home. “I need to find them and thank them. They fed us.”

Back on the street, the couple’s neighbor surveys the pile, shaking her head. “It’s hard,” she says, lowering her gaze.

The photographs below were taken by my friend Michael Pitzen in the Braeswood neighborhood. House after house ruined, the remnants of life piled high.

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”1″ gal_title=”All Galleries”]

Earlier that day, I had spent several hours working at Reef, a restaurant in Houston. It had been transformed into a staging area for relief efforts, and its owners, Bryan and Jennifer Caswell, had opened it to World Central Kitchen, a charitable organization founded by José Andrés. The large space, currently under renovation, was full of activity; a line of volunteers assembled sandwiches, others unloaded boxes of produce from a truck parked outside. The bar area was overflowing with items destined for the displaced and those who saved them; energy bars were stacked next to bags of avocados, sport drinks shared a table with tortillas.

José Andrés and I at Reef.

I took some packages of beef brisket to the kitchen and put them in a sink to thaw, then carried two large trash bags of lettuce to the dining room. There, three of us assembled salads for 500 people in Beaumont. Every 15 minutes or so, someone would walk in off the street to volunteer. One of the newcomers joined our brigade, and we continued.

The brisket had thawed, so I cut it from the bags and arranged it in four baking pans. An oven had been set up on Reef’s front patio, and I slid the pans into it. The meat, along with the salad, would feed the group in Beaumont.

Walking back into the dining room, I saw Felix Flores on the sandwich line. Flores owns Black Hill Ranch, on which he raises a variety of pigs. The ranch had flooded, and a large number of the animals there had drowned, piglets and sows. Flores and his teen-age son, a day or two after surveying the damage at the ranch, were at Reef to help, father and son spreading mayonnaise on pieces of white bread, stacking slices of meat on top of sandwich after sandwich, each a little offering of hope.

Inside Reef, the work continues.

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