Category — news

It’s odd to call someone with as much experience as Bryan Caswell a new chef, but that’s exactly what Food & Wine magazine did yesterday when they chose him as one of the 10 Best New Chefs of 2009.

I don’t take awards very seriously, but this one seems to be the real deal. The 10 Best New Chefs chosen annually by Food & Wine tend to have real talent and usually go on to have stellar careers for years to come. Most tellingly, Food & Wine editors somehow avoid the coastal trap James Beard Awards so predictably fall into every year (Caswell was bounced out from the list of final nominees to make room for chefs in Las Vegas who share the Southwestern region with Houston – WTF?) and go out of their way to find truly great food around the country.

Carnitas, cooling raita at Reef

In a lot of ways the “new” designation makes perfect sense. Caswell spent years working in the Jean-Georges Vongrichten empire, but Reef is where he really began to cook his own food. Reef channels Houston at it’s best – an effortless blend of Gulf Coast ingredients and cooking traditions inflected with international flavors found in all corners of this giant city.  Visitors may never truly get a feel for the real Houston the way the locals do, but restaurants like Reef, Catalan, Rainbow Lodge, Beaver’s and soon to be open Haven give them the best chance to get a taste. There are a handful of chefs defining Gulf Coast cuisine in Houston and Bryan Caswell is right in the thick of things.

Jalapeno mint jelly at Reef

Peel away the layers of national recognition and Reef’s critical acclaim and you find a guy who spends his free time in the Gulf Coast waters, obsessing about often overlooked local fish species. Or opening unassuming burger shacks that show an uncommon understanding of what really works in Houston.

Sweet potato and bacon ravioli, 
Oloroso sherry, green apple at Reef

Reef is a great place to eat, but few restaurants have become instant classics as quickly as Caswell’s latest venture – Little Big’s. The slider shack has only been open for a few short months, but on a recent night during March Madness a large crowd was gathered around a rear projection TV on the patio. It looked as if Little Big’s had been a fixture on Montrose for years. The night I picked up my very tired new puppy from the airport, Little Big’s seemed like the most natural place for a late night dinner.

Zoe’s first night at Little Big’s

The sliders at Little Big’s are a mirror image of the ones served at Reef. Given all the things to sample on the Reef menu, I never paid much attention to them until my company booked our holiday party at the 3rd Bar. I ended up eating four that night. I have always thought the concept of tiny burgers was a little silly, but for me the perfect burger comes down to good meat and the right beef to bread ratio. Little Big’s nails it on both of those counts with freshly ground beef and big yeasty rolls.

Little Big’s is almost universally loved – the only complaint you ever hear is that the beef sliders sometimes come out a little dry; most likely a side effect of the Big’s kitchen running at near capacity at all times. I found little to complain about on my first visit strategically timed at 6pm to avoid the rush. The fries are some of the best in town, walking a fine line between being crisp and hopelessly over fried. The chocolate milk shake was exemplary. The staff at Big’s were already overrun with orders that night,  but my sliders were  cooked to medium and still made a respectable mess.

Slider trio at Little Big’s

The beef was a bit more dry on the second visit, but even though I prefer burgers medium rare, the meat is of high enough quality that it tastes good even when cooked a bit beyond ideal temperature. I think at this point it comes down to figuring out just the right combination of toppings before these things are perfectly tailored my tastes. Jalapeno, Sriracha mayo and processed American cheese? If Big’s only served processed American cheese…

In any case. The Food & Wine blurb on Caswell mentions that his dream is to open to 2,000 sq foot oyster bar. Given his successful interpretation of Houston’s fast food with Little Big’s, I for one hope he takes on the taco truck next instead.

The annual My Table award nominees have been announced and voting begins this week.

I can’t bring myself to care about things like the bar service or best tablecloths, nor do I necessarily agree with all of the nominees, but there are a couple of categories worth a consideration.

Without a doubt, the Pastry Chef category belongs to Plinio Sandalio, currently with America’s in The Woodlands. You can get a good slice of cake almost anywhere in the city, but no one treats desserts as culinary creations quite like Plinio.

lemon curd, sour cream cookie, blackberry confiture & lime pop rocks
from a recent tenacity dinner

It’s getting increasingly difficult to capture in words the interplay between flavors and textures in some of Plinio’s dishes (I have tried, here and here), but just try to imagine what happens when you combine a smooth, intensely flavored ball curd, a shard of a cookie and squirt of blackberry “sauce”, then finish with line flavored pop rocks. This is seriously cool stuff.

Chef of the Year is probably a toss up between Bryan Caswell and Chris Shepherd (more about him here).

I wish the menu changed more often at Reef and some of the food could use a touch of technical complexity just to make things interesting, but if this category is going to be decided on one dish and one dish only, the beet ravioli at Reef should put Bryan Caswell in the running. It’s one of the most interesting dishes I have come across all year with an absolutely brilliant contrast in flavors.

beet ravioli at reef

I have been seeing beets on menus everywhere this year and order them almost every time I can, but this preparation at Reef and a completely different take on beets at Voice have been two of the best. What really stands out with this dish is how well the intensely acidic streaks of sauce and slightly bitter greens  work with the natural sweetness of roasted beets. The ravioli themselves are stuffed with beet tops, which might be the first time I have come across someone actually using those in cooking. 

The online menu (from February?!) on the Reef site does not list the beet ravioli, but according to Bryan you can still try it for another month or two, as long as he can get his hands on good product.

Cast your vote here.

Interesting bit of news today, via Alison Cook at the Chronicle. Max’s Wine Dive plans to expand outside of Houston. A second location is planned in Austin, which will probably appreciate Max’s irreverent atmosphere more than most other cities.

Strangely enough, I have never had dinner at Max’s and have only visited them during brunch, when I don’t have to fight for a table with party crowds on Washington. I cannot tell if Max’s has gone downhill, having never been there when JJ was still at the helm, but my few brunch visits have been very good.

Most recently, I went for the Nutella and banana stuffed French toast, which was a decadent combination of intensely sweet French toast, chocolate, perfectly crisp salty bacon and Serrano chile spiked roasted potatoes (what salmonella warning?). The dish is pure Texas and it tastes great.

Today I visited Cafe Rabelais for the first time since Jason Blankenship left. I have heard from several people that Rabelais has subsequently gone downhill, which is most unfortunate. The kitchen wasn’t always reliable, but Cafe Rabelais has long been one of the best French bistros in town.

Normally, showing up at Cafe Rabelais after 11:30am meant that you were pushing your luck and may have to wait for a table. Today, I found the restaurant almost entirely empty. The place filled up a more within the hour, but the crowds have clearly figured out that the quality has slipped.

Only it hasn’t. Maybe the food was subpar over the last few months, but my lunch today was very good. I’ve had the merguez sandwich at Rabelais once before, and it was almost completely dry. Today, the same sandwich was served on fresh loaf of bread and was perfectly grilled. The fries, which tasted battered to some people, taste light and crispy to me. I doubt there is batter on them, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were properly double fried and dusted in potato starch, which would account for a difference in texture. Either way, I thought Rabelais is better than ever. The question is why?

One possibility is that there is some fresh talent in the kitchen. I spotted a new chef I have never seen before sporting a toque that said “Jason Kerr” at Rabelais today. Could this be the same Jason Kerr who has been keeping the lights on at Zula? If so, I expect Rabelais to continue going strong.

I wasn’t surprised when Phillipe Schmit departed from the Legacy Group; it was a marriage of convenience from the start.  But I certainly didn’t think the Antone’s Market concept would be given up for dead so soon after opening. The Antone’s sign is gone. No one is wearing the kitchy “Fast Food for Foodies” t-shirts. Windows are covered in butchers paper.

I stopped by Antone’s shortly after it opened and thought it had some promise. The former Greenberry’s space lost none of it’s warmth and seemed more like a neighborhood cafe than a fast food restaurant.

I ordered an oyster po-boy, which was better than most served in Houston. The baguette had an excellent crust that shattered into pieces at first bite. The fixins were great, especially the house made pickles. The oysters seemed a little water logged, but were properly breaded and fried. The only thing that seemed out of place was the red cabbage, which has a bit too much resistance for a po-boy. Still, a major improvement over the mess they serve at Ragin Cajun.

While I was waiting for my po-boy to be made I spotted Schmit run in for a few minutes, review some books at the office and scurry away. A man on a mission building a fast food empire.

I ordered some take out for a pair of starving pharmacists and they found Antone’s attempts at the falafel sandwich a bit over engineered. Apparently the sandwiches and the absurdly priced roasted red peppers ($7?) were studded with a heavy doze of lemon juice and herbs to kick up the flavor.

I wasn’t sure exactly why I never made it back to Antone’s Market after that, until I remembered the pastries, which looked good, but didn’t taste like much. Maybe that summed up Antone’s best - trying to do too much, without doing anything well. You could easily find better, less gentrified versions of food Antone’s offered elsewhere. This is Houston, after all.

I hope Phillipe Schmit lands at a proper restaurant somewhere. He is a good enough chef to not have to be a “corporate” anything.

When Philippe Schmidt went to France for a visit last year, the Chronicle recruited him to be a guest contributor to describe his experiences in the Chef’s Corner blog. Philippe’s daily exploits made for a great read, even though he is disturbingly cheerful and joyous about the daily wonders of life. 

Now the Chronicle is doing it again, this time with Jason Gould of Gravitas, who’s going to his hometown of Melbourne, Australia.

I had a blast visiting Sydney earlier this year, but my one regret was not making it to Melbourne. The difference between the two cities is described as that of LA vs NY, Melbourne being the bustling metropolis with much better food.

I thought Sydney was far more appealing than the craphole that is LA, but missing out on all the great food in Melbourne has been gnawing at me ever since. Now I can at least read about it as Jason eats his way through his hometown.