Looks like the talent drain from the Cordua restaurants is finally complete. You can now find Plinio and his brilliant desserts at Gravitas, which should be a much better fit for his abilities than America’s. There is only so much you can do in a restaurant where nostalgia for the “original” tres leches cake recipe dictates what happens in the kitchen.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the Cordua family at one of Randy’s dinners. Both Michael and David are clearly highly intelligent restaurateurs who care about their business and their customers. Still, I can’t stop thinking about opportunity lost here. Under JJ and Plinio, America’s was shaping up to be one of the best restaurants in Houston. What will happen to it now that they are both gone?
As I have said before, food at Gravitas has recently taken a turn for the better and I hope Plinio get’s to pull double duty and fill the pastry chef role at the Textile, when it opens. Having just completed a tour through some of the top restaurants in Europe I am even more convinced that Plinio is a rising star. Maybe Textile is just ambitious enough of a project to let him show what he can really do.
For now, drool over these smoked brownies served at a recent Tenacity dinner, which really taste more like luscious nuggets of smoke inflected chocolate ganache.
Ironically, these would fit right in at Beaver’s, where desserts have been very disappointing thus far.
Misha, are you finally home??? Welcome back!
And — YAY! — exciting news about JJ and Plinio, huh?
Frankly, cordua’s management leaves a lot to be desired. They are clearly in need of top management talent that can make wise decisions and stop confusing us customers. Cooks, like the Cordua, do not always make competent managers. Think about all the money wasted in recruiting and training these talented individuals. As a customer, I will miss JJ and Plinio in the Woodlands. Heck, I may not even come back to Americas.
It’s true that not all great artists/craftsmen are great managers, but I am not certain that’s the case with the Cordua family. Their restaurants seem to be well run and the food is generally pretty good. They are just not great, nor exciting in a way that a chef driven restaurant is exciting.
At the end of the day, I think Cordua restaurants are built to be great businesses, rather than great restaurants. Come to think of it, only a handful of Paris and NY chefs successfully build scalable businesses that also turn out consistently great and often creative food.
But those are usually founded by extremely rigorous cooks who build virtual culinary universities within their empires that produce and retain fresh talent. That requires immense disciple and commitment, but may actually be less lucrative than Landry’s, which unfortunately serves as a model for Houston restaurateurs.
BTW, when I met Michael several weeks ago he told me that he recently received his MBA.